Format date in MySQL SELECT as ISO 8601

Question

I'm trying to grab the date from my database in a standard timestamp and display it as ISO 8601. I'm unable to easily do it in PHP so I'm trying to do it in my SELECT statement. This is what I have, but it displays an error:

SELECT * FROM table_name ORDER BY id DESC DATE_FORMAT(date,"%Y-%m-%dT%TZ")

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

The DATE_FORMAT(DateColumn) has to be in the SELECT list:

SELECT DATE_FORMAT(date, '%Y-%m-%dT%TZ') AS date_formatted
FROM table_name 
ORDER BY id DESC 

Answer 2

DATE_FORMAT only works on MySQL date columns, not timestamps.

A UNIX timestamp is an integer containing the number of seconds since Jan 1, 1970 UTC. To format this as an ISO 8601 date you need to use the FROM_UNIXTIME() function instead.

FROM_UNIXTIME takes the same format strings as DATE_FORMAT, so to format a column named 'created' you'd:

SELECT created /* e.g. 1288799488 */ , 
       FROM_UNIXTIME(created,'%Y-%m-%dT%TZ') /* e.g. 2010-11-03T08:51:28Z */
FROM table_name

Answer 3

This worked for me

DATE_FORMAT( CONVERT_TZ(`timestamp`, @@session.time_zone, '+00:00')  ,'%Y-%m-%dT%TZ')

Answer 4

Why is it hard to do it in PHP?

date("Y-m-d\TH:i:sO",strtotime($sqldata['time']));

Anyway, that DATE_FORMAT needs to be in the fields to select, not tacked on to the end.

Answer 5

You should move the DATE_FORMAT to the select part of your query like this:

SELECT *, DATE_FORMAT(date,"%Y-%m-%dT%TZ") AS date FROM table_name ORDER BY id DESC

Answer 6

Loading the date field from the database and converting it to ISO format with PHP is straight-forward; see the c format string to PHP date: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.date.php

echo date('c'); // expected "2013-03-08T14:45:37+05:00"

Answer 7

DATE_FORMAT(date, '%Y-%m-%dT%TZ') should be in select clause.

SELECT DATE_FORMAT(date, '%Y-%m-%dT%TZ') 
FROM table_name 
ORDER BY id DESC