Order date stored as VARCHAR in MySql?

Question

The .NET code, DateTime.Now.ToString() outputs something like this:

11/28/2011 1:17:05 PM

I store it in MySQL as a VARCHAR .

When I SELECT it back to my DataTable, I would like it to be ordered. Of course since it's a VARCHAR , a simple ORDER BY will sort it alphabetically and not chronologically.

Is there a way to ORDER BY this chronologically, using SQL?

Answer 1

You will want the STR_TO_DATE function

SELECT columns
FROM table
ORDER BY STR_TO_DATE(varCharDateColumn, '%m/%d/%Y %h:%i:%s')