在日期结束时替换DAY

Question

I have a column in MySQL stored as: 2014-03-16 (for March 16, 2014). It has been decided that the fields should all be changed to the first day of the month -- whatever months in which they occur. I have records that span from 1998 to present day, several thousand of them. Is there an easier way to change just the DAY (in this case, 16) on all the records besides REPLACE 2014-03-16 with 2014-03-01?

I am using PHP, so if it's easier to change it there let me know.

Answer 1

You can do it using a MySQL query:

UPDATE your_table 
  SET date_column = DATE_FORMAT(date_column ,'%Y-%m-01')