[Resolved] Converting the MySQL date format to a readable one

Calahan

I have written in some code to my website that enters the date that the user became a member and it then writes that date back to the member page when the user is logged on. What I would like to do is to display the date as something like dd/mm/yyyy or Saturday 30th August 2003 rather than the way it's stored in MySQL (2003-08-30). I'm assuming that there is a function to do this within PHP such as strtotime() perhaps but I can't find any examples of what I am trying to do.
If there is no function already in place, I might try to write my own but I thought I'd check before setting to work.

fimbria

you could use something like .....

SELECT date_format(date2,'%D %M %Y')as eventdate, event from
date_table

Calahan

Umm, could you expand on that?
I've only been using PHP for a month or so. What does the %D, %M, %Y do?

shawon22

date_format function takes a date and converts it to the format given

%D = Day of the month
%M = Month
%Y = Year

date_format(date2,'%D %M %Y') --> returns somthing like
30-08-2003

Ravenous

If I store dates in a database, I simply store UNIX timestamps in fields defined as VARCHARs. I do not like MySQL's date format. :p

fimbria

as shawon22 stated:

it how you wish to display the date, when you query your database. In my example, you would get something like

31st August 2003

....when you print the variable "eventdate" on your page.... date2 refers to the name which you have given to the date field in your table.

hope that helps, sorry i didn't explain before....

laters
fimbria