How to select rows for a specific date, ignoring time in SQL Server

Question

Given a table with a datetime column, how do I query for rows where the date matches the value I specify but ignores the time portion?

For example, select * from sales where salesDate = '11/11/2010'

For this query we don't care about the time. Other queries require the time component so we can't store only the date component.

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can remove the time component when comparing:

SELECT *  FROM sales  WHERE CONVERT(DATETIME, FLOOR(CONVERT(FLOAT, salesDate))) = '11/11/2010' 

Another approach is to change the select to cover all the time between the start and end of the date:

SELECT *  FROM sales  -- WHERE salesDate BETWEEN '11/11/2010 00:00:00.00' AND '11/11/2010 23:59:59.999' WHERE salesDate BETWEEN '2020-05-18T00:00:00.00' AND '2020-05-18T23:59:59.999' 

Answer 2

I know it's been a while on this question, but I was just looking for the same answer and found this seems to be the simplest solution:

select * from sales where datediff(dd, salesDate, '20101111') = 0 

I actually use it more to find things within the last day or two, so my version looks like this:

select * from sales where datediff(dd, salesDate, getdate()) = 0 

And by changing the 0 for today to a 1 I get yesterday's transactions, 2 is the day before that, and so on. And if you want everything for the last week, just change the equals to a less-than-or-equal-to:

select * from sales where datediff(dd, salesDate, getdate()) <= 7