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')

```
My main problem was getting the string to format into datetime. kissmyface was correct on just structuring it correctly so mysql could understand. So I used php to convert it before sending it out. 

```
"Project.approval_date >= '".date("Y-m-d H:i:s", strtotime($start))."'";
"Project.approval_date <= '".date("Y-m-d H:i:s",strtotime($end))."'";

```

this was pretty much my solution. unless anyone knows away to do the exact same thing on mysql side.