How store date in MySQL database?

Question

I have date in dd/mm/yyyy format. How can I store it in a database, if I want to do some operations on it afterwards?

For example, I must find out the rows, where date > something. What type I must set for the date field?

Answer 1

To store dates or times in MySQL use date, datetime or timestamp. I'd recommend the first two for most purposes.

To tell MySQL how to parse your date format use the STR_TO_DATE function. Here's an example:

CREATE TABLE table1 (`Date` Date);
INSERT INTO table1 (`Date`) VALUES (STR_TO_DATE('01/05/2010', '%m/%d/%Y'));
SELECT * FROM table1;

Date
2010-01-05

To format the results back into the original form look at the DATE_FORMAT function. Note that you only need to format it if you want to display it as a string using something other than the default format.