Ordering by Date

[langer]

I have a table in my MySQL database with date in this format: 10.28.2004 (mm.dd.yyyy)

When I try to retrieve my information and order by date, I get something like this:

Name Date (mm.dd.yyyy)
Brian ----- 01.21.2005
Jonathan ---- 01.7.2005
Ed ---------- 02.18.2005
Rae -------- 02.4.2005
John -------- 03.18.2005
Ryan ------- 03.4.2005

It is pretty obvious that when it sorts like that it isn't in chronological order. How do I fix this?

[devinemke]

it sounds like your are storing dates in a TEXT or VARCHAR field, a big no no. databases have specific field types that allow it to effectively work with the data. you need to specify the field as DATE type. the default format for mySQL DATE fields is YYYY-MM-DD but your can always reformat it any way you want when retrieving the data using mySQL's Date and Time functions.