SQL Server : NVARCHAR column to store date

Question

I have a query that needs to be output in CSV.

No problem I say, but then this happens:

There are two columns (from and to date) which are date type, but I am trying to store them as nvarchar or varchar (tried both). This is in order to be able to insert the column headers in the extract.

I have tried a couple of CONVERT , CAST , STUFF to force the date in the format of YYYY-MM-DD , but to no avail.

Currently it is in this format: Jan 1 2014 12:00AM

I have tried almost everything I've found on Stack Overflow in similar topics, but nothing has worked for me.

I would also be happy if there could be an alternative on the column names, as I have not experimented with that one a lot.

Currently this is being used:

SELECT 'Column1', 'Column2', 'Column3'
UNION ALL
SELECT * FROM [Database].[dbo].Table

Answer 1

I think you want convert(varchar(10), col, 120) which will truncate a date format of yyyy-mm-dd hh:mi:ss(24h) to yyyy-mm-dd

see cast and convert for more details

SELECT 
     'id'          AS id
     , 'date_from' AS date_from
     , 'date_to'   AS date_to
UNION ALL
SELECT 
     convert(varchar(10), id)
     , convert(varchar(10), date_from, 120)
     , convert(varchar(10), date_to, 120) 
FROM [Database].[dbo].Table