get nearest date

[greedyisg00d]

I have a table schedule with fields user,date and time. How can I select the user with the nearest date or schedule with the current date?

Also for example if two or more records have the same date, the time will then be the basis for the nearest schedule.

Thanks

[bradgrafelman]

Order by the datetime difference (ascending, obviously, since you want the smallest difference), e.g.

ORDER BY ABS(datetime_col - NOW()) ASC LIMIT 1

EDIT: Note that I used the absolute value of the difference... you could add in a WHERE condition that only selects positive or negative differences, depending upon your specific needs.