strtotime:Formatting or converting date values returned from MYSQL table

When we receive date value or date and time value from mysql table, we need to convert them in more readable format based on our requirement. We will use here two PHP functions. The function strtotime() will convert the returned value in mysql date and time format to timestamp. Then we will apply date() function to convert them into our readable format. Here in our example we will keep two fields in the table, one with one DATE field and the other one with DATETIME field. Before this you can read mysql select query on how to get data from a table.

<?Php
$qt=mysql_query("select * from
dt_tb");

//Now let us display the data 


while($nt=mysql_fetch_array($qt)){
echo "$nt[id],".date("d-m-Y : G-i",strtotime($nt[dt])).",$nt[dt2] ";

echo "<br>";
}
?>

This is how the formatting done using strtotime() and date() functions. You can change the date() function formatting based on your requirements. The output of the above script is here.

1,26-10-2004 : 0-00,2005-01-25
2,05-05-2004 : 23-56,2005-06-12
3,08-12-2005 : 13-20,2005-06-06

Here is the sql code to create and fill the table with records

CREATE TABLE dt_tb (
id int(2) NOT NULL auto_increment,
dt datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00',
dt2 date NOT NULL default '0000-00-00',
PRIMARY KEY (id)
) TYPE=MyISAM;

#
# Dumping data for table `dt_tb`
#

INSERT INTO dt_tb VALUES (1, '2004-10-26 00:00:00', '2005-01-25');
INSERT INTO dt_tb VALUES (2, '2004-05-05 23:56:25', '2005-06-12');
INSERT INTO dt_tb VALUES (3, '2005-12-08 13:20:10', '2005-06-06');

Subhendu Mohapatra

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Formatting date values returned from MYSQL table to more readable format including time

Subhendu Mohapatra