DATE_FORMAT(date,format)

Formats the date value according to the format string.

The following specifiers may be used in the format string. As of MySQL 3.23, the “” character is required before format specifier characters. In earlier versions of MySQL, “” was optional.

The %v, %V, %x, and %X format specifiers are available as of MySQL 3.23.8. %f is available as of MySQL 4.1.1.

Ranges for the month and day specifiers begin with zero due to the fact that MySQL permits the storing of incomplete dates such as '2014-00-00' (as of MySQL 3.23).

As of MySQL 4.1.21, the language used for day and month names and abbreviations is controlled by the value of the lc_time_names system variable (Section 9.8, “MySQL Server Locale Support”).

As of MySQL 4.1.23, DATE_FORMAT() returns a string with a character set and collation given by character_set_connection and collation_connection so that it can return month and weekday names containing non-ASCII characters. Before 4.1.23, the return value is a binary string.

mysql> SELECT DATE_FORMAT('2009-10-04 22:23:00', '%W %M %Y');
 -> 'Sunday October 2009'
mysql> SELECT DATE_FORMAT('2007-10-04 22:23:00', '%H:%i:%s');
 -> '22:23:00'
mysql> SELECT DATE_FORMAT('1900-10-04 22:23:00',
 ->  '%D %y %a %d %m %b %j');
 -> '4th 00 Thu 04 10 Oct 277'
mysql> SELECT DATE_FORMAT('1997-10-04 22:23:00',
 ->  '%H %k %I %r %T %S %w');
 -> '22 22 10 10:23:00 PM 22:23:00 00 6'
mysql> SELECT DATE_FORMAT('1999-01-01', '%X %V');
 -> '1998 52'
mysql> SELECT DATE_FORMAT('2006-06-00', '%d');
 -> '00'