Question: My Queries looks like this

```
WHERE `Project`.`user_id` = 9 
  AND `Project`.`project_status` = 1 
  AND `Project`.`project_type_id` = 4
  AND `Project`.`approval_date` >= '01/08/2012' 
  AND `Project`.`approval_date` <= '01/12/2012'

```

I do have a record that matches this criteria, I actually created the query based on one of the records but it does not return. I really do not want to use the `BETWEEN` because the application can either use start date or end date

Answer: 
You should convert '01/08/2012' and '01/12/2012' to MySQL date/time values using [STR\_TO\_DATE()](http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/date-and-time-functions.html#function_str-to-date)

e.g.

```
STR_TO_DATE('01/08/2012', '%d/%m/%Y')

```
you can still use `BETWEEN`

```
WHERE `Project`.`user_id` = 9 
AND `Project`.`project_status` = 1 
AND `Project`.`project_type_id` = 4
AND (`Project`.`approval_date` BETWEEN '2012-01-08 00:00:00' AND '2012-01-12 23:59:59')

```