How to convert a dateformat from SQL Server to MySQL - mysql

Question

I've been searching the internet for almost 6 hours now for the fastest solution to my problem.
I've got a SQL Server database where some of the tables have a DATETIME format for columns, but the values in these columns are in the following format:
DD-MM-YYYY HH:MM
eg.
18-12-2012 00:00
From my research MySQL only accepts the following format for its DATETIME values:
YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS
Now, I'm actually trying to make the conversion in the Scripts themselves, not the database.
basically I have over 250,000 records in multiple tables in SQL Server Script Format.
I've already changed all the syntax to MySQL except this part.
Any help or advice would be appreciated. URGENT.
thank you
This is the Table
CREATE TABLE Price(
AirlineCode char(2) NOT NULL
, FlightNumber varchar(6) NOT NULL
, ClassCode char(3) NOT NULL
, TicketCode char(1) NOT NULL
, StartDate DateTime NOT NULL
, EndDate DateTime NOT NULL
, Price decimal NOT NULL
, PriceLeg1 decimal NULL
, PriceLeg2 decimal NULL
, PRIMARY KEY (
AirlineCode,
FlightNumber,
ClassCode,
TicketCode,
StartDate
)
, FOREIGN KEY (AirlineCode) REFERENCES Airlines (AirlineCode)
, FOREIGN KEY (ClassCode) REFERENCES TicketClass (ClassCode)
, FOREIGN KEY (TicketCode) REFERENCES TicketType (TicketCode));
and this is a sample insertion:
INSERT INTO Price VALUES ( 'QF', 'QF67', 'ECO', 'E', '18-12-2012 00:00', '04-01-2013 00:00', 3427.82, 1636.14, 2045.20 );

Answer 1

You can use MySQL STR_TO_DATE() function to convert dates from a known format to a datetime value. Assuming that you have dates in dd-mm-yyyy hh:mm (all numbers 0 padded and hh:mm is a 24-hour time) you can use:
SELECT STR_TO_DATE('18-12-2012 00:00', '%d-%m-%Y %k:%i')
-- 2012-12-18 00:00:00
You can use this function in your insert queries like so:
INSERT INTO Price VALUES (
'QF',
'QF67',
'ECO',
'E',
STR_TO_DATE('18-12-2012 00:00', '%d-%m-%Y %k:%i'),
STR_TO_DATE('04-01-2013 00:00', '%d-%m-%Y %k:%i'),
3427.82,
1636.14,
2045.20
);
Edit
If editing your insert queries is not possible, you can let MySQL do all the conversion. Temporarily change the datatype of datetime columns to VARCHAR and import the data. Then add a temporary field e.g. StartDate_Temp DATETIME and run an update query:
UPDATE Price SET StartDate_Temp = STR_TO_DATE(StartDate, '%d-%m-%Y %k:%i')
Once you've verified that your data is OK, delete the temporary columns.

Answer 2

Edited answer:
Also, you may use RegEx in SQL Server Management Studio:
Find what: {[0-9][0-9]}\-{[0-9][0-9]}\-{[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]} {[0-9][0-9]}\:{[0-9][0-9]}
Replace with:\3-\2-\1

Answer 3

First of all I would like to say thank you to all for your efforts. This was the first question I've ever asked at StackOverflow.com and am really impressed by the level of support.
After a little bit more research, I remembered the good old toolkit of RegEx that I learnt last year. So I decided to put it in some good use.
in Notepad++ thanks to its Regex search capabilities, I managed to trace down every date value in my 250000 records and replace them with the required ones.
([0-9][0-9])-([0-9][0-9])-([0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]) ([0-9][0-9]:[0-9][0-9])
this was the search I put through for the date format that I had, and then i swapped the year and the day values and added the seconds in there as well by having the following in the Replace with box:
\3-\2-\1 \4:00
Problem solved.