MySQL Cookbook

Finding the Day of the Week for a Date

Problem

You want to know the day of the week a date falls on.

Solution

Use the DAYNAME( ) function.

Discussion

To determine the name of the day of the week for a given date, use DAYNAME( ):

mysql> SELECT CURDATE( ), DAYNAME(CURDATE( ));
+------------+--------------------+
| CURDATE( )  | DAYNAME(CURDATE( )) |
+------------+--------------------+
| 2002-07-15 | Monday             |
+------------+--------------------+

DAYNAME( ) is often useful in conjunction with other date-related techniques. For example, to find out the day of the week for the first of the month, use the first-of-month expression from earlier in the chapter as the argument to DAYNAME( ):

mysql> SET @d = CURDATE( );
mysql> SET @first = DATE_SUB(@d,INTERVAL DAYOFMONTH(@d)-1 DAY);
mysql> SELECT @d AS 'starting date',
    -> @first AS '1st of month date',
    -> DAYNAME(@first) AS '1st of month day';
+---------------+-------------------+------------------+
| starting date | 1st of month date | 1st of month day |
+---------------+-------------------+------------------+
| 2002-07-15    | 2002-07-01        | Monday           |
+---------------+-------------------+------------------+