TO_DATE()

Description

TO_DATE() returns a DATETIME value if the format string contains both date and time parts, or a DATE or TIME value if the string contains only date or time parts.

Syntax

> TO_DATE(str,format)

Arguments

Arguments	Description
str	Required. If the date, time, or datetime value extracted from str is illegal, STR_TO_DATE() returns NULL and produces a warning. If str is NULL, the function returns NULL.
format	Required. A format string indicating the format of the return value. If the format is omitted, this function returns a DATETIME value. If the format is NULL, this function returns NULL. If the format is supplied, the value returned is a VARCHAR.

note

The format string can contain literal characters and format specifiers beginning with %. Literal characters in format must match literally in str. Format specifiers in format must match a date or time part in str.

Examples

mysql> SELECT TO_DATE('2022-01-06 10:20:30','%Y-%m-%d %H:%i:%s') as result;
+---------------------+
| result              |
+---------------------+
| 2022-01-06 10:20:30 |
+---------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)                 

Constraints

The date type supports only yyyy-mm-dd and yyyymmdd for now.