Does SQL Server have Date_Format function?

Question

As title, does it?

All I found is a list of predefined DateFormat that I can choose from, like this

As I remember in MySQL (and PostgeSQL too?) you can defines your Date Format:

i.e DATE_FORMAT(now(),'&m_%Y') --for 02_2012 etc.

Does SQL Server have the same thing? I see people have to write a function to do such thing, does it have a built-in one?

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EDIT:

I just found DatePart function, I can take Month as number, but always 1 digits even I use datePart(MM, getdate())

Answer 1

Not yet.

You need to use CONVERT with a style parameter or hack something together with DATEPART or DATENAME.

SQL Server 2012 will have the FORMAT function though that accepts a .NET Framework format string

Syntax:

FORMAT ( value, format [, culture ] )

Example Usage

SELECT FORMAT(getdate(), 'dd/MM/yyyy', 'en-US' ) 

You could always use CLR integration and create your own UDF that does the same thing for 2005 or 2008.

Answer 2

If your goal is simply formatted output and it doesn't need to remain in the datetime datatype, using CONVERT with a format code is an excellent tool. A list of formats and their respective codes can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187928.aspx