Selecting entries by date - >= NOW(), MySQL

Question

I have a Calendar of Events table and I would like to select events with dates equal to or greater than today. When I use the following SELECT statement, it only retrieves events in the future (> NOW()):

<?php    
$db->query("SELECT * FROM events WHERE event_date >= NOW()");
?>

How would I go about selecting all events that are either today or in the future?

Thank you

Answer 1

You are looking for CURDATE() :

$db->query("SELECT * FROM events WHERE event_date >= CURDATE()");

Or:

$db->query("SELECT * FROM events WHERE event_date >= CURRENT_DATE()");

Answer 2

The reason that this query:

SELECT * FROM events WHERE event_date >= NOW()

...returns records from the future, is because NOW() includes the time as well as the date. And that time portion indicates the time at which the [function or triggering] statement began to execute. So that means the start of the day in a DATETIME data type looks like: 2010-06-24 00:00:00 (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS, to microsecond precision), which NOW() would show something like 2010-06-24 14:24:31 ...

Here are your options:

SELECT * FROM events WHERE event_date >= DATE(NOW())
SELECT * FROM events WHERE event_date >= DATE(CURRENT_TIMESTAMP)
SELECT * FROM events WHERE event_date >= CURRENT_DATE()
SELECT * FROM events WHERE event_date >= CURRDATE()

Answer 3

You could also do

<?php    
$db->query("SELECT * FROM events WHERE UNIX_TIMESTAMP(event_date) >=     UNIX_TIMESTAMP(NOW())");
?>

Which is more accurate than using CURTIME() if by any chance your using time as well as date

Answer 4

If you care only about the date, not the time, use CURDATE() instead of NOW() .

Of course you can alternatively use the synonym CURRENT_DATE (with or without parentheses after it), but the docs I pointed to give CURDATE as the first spelling;-).

Answer 5

Your issue is that now() is very accurate. So dates for today and before now because they started at the beginning of the day.

Use this:

select * from events where datediff(event_date, now()) >= 0;

Answer 6

Here's the difference between CURDATE and NOW:

mysql> select CURDATE();
+------------+
| CURDATE()  |
+------------+
| 2017-03-17 |
+------------+
1 row in set (0.03 sec)

mysql> select NOW();
+---------------------+
| NOW()               |
+---------------------+
| 2017-03-17 09:04:45 |
+---------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

I always use NOW just to be accurate