Mysql: Setup the format of DATETIME to 'DD-MM-YYYY HH:MM:SS' when creating a table

"MySQL retrieves and displays DATETIME values in 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS' format." This is from mysql site. You can store only this type, but you can use one of the many time format functions to change it, when you need to display it.

Mysql Time and Date functions

For example, one of those functions is the DATE_FORMAT, which can be used like so:

SELECT DATE_FORMAT(column_name, '%m/%d/%Y %H:%i') FROM tablename

Use DATE_FORMAT function to change the format.

SELECT DATE_FORMAT(CURDATE(), '%d/%m/%Y')

SELECT DATE_FORMAT(column_name, '%d/%m/%Y') FROM tablename

Refer DOC for more details

As others have explained that it is not possible, but here's alternative solution, it requires a little tuning, but it works like datetime column.

I started to think, how I could make formatting possible. I got an idea. What about making trigger for it? I mean, adding column with type char, and then updating that column using a MySQL trigger. And that worked! I made some research related to triggers, and finally come up with these queries:

CREATE TRIGGER timestampper BEFORE INSERT ON table
FOR EACH
ROW SET NEW.timestamp = DATE_FORMAT(NOW(), '%d-%m-%Y %H:%i:%s');

CREATE TRIGGER timestampper BEFORE UPDATE ON table
FOR EACH
ROW SET NEW.timestamp = DATE_FORMAT(NOW(), '%d-%m-%Y %H:%i:%s');

You can't use TIMESTAMP or DATETIME as a column type, because these have their own format, and they update automatically.

So, here's your alternative timestamp or datetime alternative! Hope this helped, at least I'm glad that I got this working.