Working with times and dates

As we discussed in Chapter 2, Databases and Tables, MariaDB supports the following temporal data types:

• DATE

• TIME

• DATETIME

• TIMESTAMP

Working with this kind of data requires specifically-designed functions and syntaxes. This section discusses how to perform the most common temporal operations.

Writing temporal values

With old MariaDB versions, DATE, TIME, and DATETIME values can only be written as strings. This syntax has been designed to be as error-proof as possible, which makes it very easy to use. Some examples are as follows:

• '1994-01-01'

• '1994-01-01 12:30:00'

• '12:30'

Starting from version 10.0, the standard SQL syntax can be used. This eliminates ambiguities in the rare cases when MariaDB does not know if a value should be regarded as a string or as a date. The standard syntax is:

• DATE '1994-01-01'

• TIMESTAMP '1994-01-01 12:30:00'

• TIME '12:30'

Adding and subtracting time intervals

It is possible to add or subtract a time interval to specific temporal data. The syntax...