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MySQL NOW Function

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MySQL Now function is one of the MySQL Date Functions, which returns the current Date and Time in YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS or YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.uuu format.

The basic syntax of the NOW() Function in MySQL is as shown below:

NOW();

MySQL NOW function Example

The following query shows you the basic use of this now function to get the current date and time.

SELECT NOW();

OUTPUT

MySQL Now Example 1

As you can see from the above screenshot, it returns today’s date and Time in YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS format. Let us see another MySQL example with Alias Name.

SELECT NOW() AS 'Todays date and Time';

OUTPUT

MySQL Now Example 2

The following Date Function query explains to you what happens when we add value to this now function.

SELECT NOW() + 5;

SELECT NOW(), NOW() + 5;

OUTPUT

MySQL Now Example 4

From the above screenshot, it added those values to the current date and time. I mean, seconds to current date and time. Next, it is displaying the date in YYYYMMDDHHMMSS string format

MySQL NOW Example 2

In this example, we show you how to use this Now function on columns. Here, we are using a datediff function to find the difference between now and the Hire Date column value.

For this demonstration, we are using Workbench to write a query against the customer database.

SELECT EmpID,
       FirstName,
       LastName,
       Occupation,
       YearlyIncome,
       Sales,
       HireDate,
       DATEDIFF(NOW(), HireDate) AS Difference
 FROM `MySQL Tutorial`.customer;

OUTPUT

MySQL Now Example 5