Title: Problem displaying formatted date using DATE_FORMAT
Last modified: August 19, 2016

---

# Problem displaying formatted date using DATE_FORMAT

 *  [freelantz](https://wordpress.org/support/users/freelantz/)
 * (@freelantz)
 * [17 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/problem-displaying-formatted-date-using-date_format/)
 * I’m using the following to display a list of recent news (“News” category) on
   the main page:
 *     ```
       $news=$wpdb->get_results("SELECT  p.ID, p.post_title, p.post_date
       FROM wp_posts p
       , wp_term_taxonomy t
       , wp_term_relationships r
       WHERE p.ID = r.object_id
       and r.term_taxonomy_id = t.term_taxonomy_id
       and p.post_type = \"post\"
       and t.term_id = \"4\"
       and p.post_status = \"publish\" ORDER BY ID DESC LIMIT ".$how_many);
       foreach($news as $np){
       printf ("<li><small>%s: </small><a href=\"http://mikinduri.com/blog/archives/%s\">%s</a></li>", $np->post_date,$np->ID,$np->post_title);
       }?>
       ```
   
 * The result is this:
 * # 2008-07-03 10:39:01: Vogue Optical Donates Sunglasses
    # 2008-05-21 09:01:42:
   Compost Sale # 2008-01-21 09:37:27: Mikinduri Foundation back on track # 2008-
   01-02 12:17:07: Very Sad News: MCoH Worker Murdered # 2007-12-07 10:58:55: MCoH
   on CBC News, The National
 * I would like to format the date. Prior to upgrading to WP 2.6 I used this in 
   my SELECT statement and it worked:
 * DATE_FORMAT(p.post_date, ‘%M %D, %Y’)
 * However, when I use the DATE_FORMAT function now, the above code returns this:
 * # : Vogue Optical Donates Sunglasses
    # : Compost Sale # : Mikinduri Foundation
   back on track # : Very Sad News: MCoH Worker Murdered # : MCoH on CBC News, The
   National
 * Why does the formatted date not get printed?

The topic ‘Problem displaying formatted date using DATE_FORMAT’ is closed to new
replies.

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 0 replies
 * 1 participant
 * Last reply from: [freelantz](https://wordpress.org/support/users/freelantz/)
 * Last activity: [17 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/problem-displaying-formatted-date-using-date_format/)
 * Status: not resolved

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