i am learning PHP, and have a piece of PHP code that queries a Database. I obtain a date that is already in the Database and was wondering whether this piece of code format('dd-mm-yyyy'); would work to format the data from the default 'YYYY-MM-DD' to 'DD-MM-YYYY' and how the code can be utilsed?

<?php 

    $rfp = $_GET['cid'];
 // Connects to Database 
 mysql_connect("localhost", "root") or die(mysql_error()); 
 mysql_select_db("test") or die(mysql_error()); 
 $data = mysql_query("SELECT rfp_id, issue_date, rfp_status.status FROM company, rfp, rfp_status WHERE company.company_id = rfp.company_id AND rfp_status.status_id = rfp.status_id AND company.company_id = '$rfp'") 
 or die(mysql_error()); 
  echo "<table border=1px cellpadding=15 bordercolor='#0000CC'>";
   #echo "<table border=0 cellpadding=15 bordercolor='#0000CC'>";
echo "<tr align = center bgcolor=white>
<td><b>RFP ID</b></td><td><b>Date Added</b></td><td><b>Status</b></td>" ; 
 while($row = mysql_fetch_array($data)){
      $rid = $row['rfp_id'];  
      $idate = $row['issue_date'];
      $status = $row['status'];

# inserts value into table as a hyperlink

echo "<tr align = center bgcolor=white><td>$rid</td><td><b><a target='_blank' href=view_section_detail.php?rid=$rid>$idate</a></b></td><td>$status</td>";
}

# displays table

print '</table>';

 ?>

Any help would be appreciated

Thanks

You can do it directly in the database query like this using mysql date_format:

SELECT rfp_id, date_format(issue_date,'%d-%m-%Y') as issue_date... etc

There is no format():

$idate = strtotime($row['issue_date']); // assuming $row['issue_date'] is YYYY-MM-DD
$idate = date('d-m-Y', $idate);

In MySQL, you can use DATE_FORMAT()

SELECT DATE_FORMAT(colName, '%d-%m-%Y') formattedDate
FROM...
WHERE ...

Other Formats here

SQLFiddle Demo

try this

$idate = date('d-m-Y',strtotime($row['issue_date']));

Try this

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($data)){
      $rid = $row['rfp_id'];  
      $idate = date("d-m-Y", strtotime($row['issue_date']));
      $status = $row['status'];

# inserts value into table as a hyperlink

echo "<tr align = center bgcolor=white><td>$rid</td><td><b><a target='_blank' href=view_section_detail.php?rid=$rid>$idate</a></b></td><td>$status</td>";
}