Searching thru dates

dates, mysql

[brancook]

I have a date column in a table that displays the date for a given record like this "November 10, 2008". What would my sql statement look like if I just wanted to find all of the records from "November".

WHERE Date = "November" doesn't work for me, I get no records found. I need to look past the day and year.

[jatar_k]

you would need to use LIKE

WHERE Date LIKE "November%"

the % represents 'any number of characters'

[LifeinAsia]

It would be better if you can change the field type (and underlying data) to DATETIME instead of VARCHAR (or at least add another field of type DATETIME). Using VARCHAR fields to store dates is just asking for problems later on.

[brancook]

Thanks jatar_k

I did set it up as a VARCHAR field, this is actually one of the first databases I've put together. What would it take to change the field type (and underlying data) to DATETIME?

[LifeinAsia]

Most likely- add another field of DATETIME format, then do a conversion of the "Date" field, then drop the "Date" field after all the values have been converted.

One other suggestion I forgot to mention before, using reserved words (like "Date" or "Time") for field or table names is not a good idea. It often causes major headaches down the road.