Delete expired entries in MYSQL
For those who want to delete items in a MySQL database based on a date field the process is very easy.
First of all you need a DATE field, for example a coupon expiration date. the data is saved in the following format: YYYY-MM-DD
Then all you need to delete older items is this:
DELETE FROM coupons WHERE expiration < '2010-12-03'
make sure that your date is set between single quotes ( ' ) if you don't then MySql will treat this as an arithmetic operation 2010 - 12 - 03 = 1995
you can use the php function date to generate a time stamp for today
$today = date("Y-m-d"); // will output something like 2010-12-03
or for yesterday you could use something like
$yestday = date("Y").'-'.date("m").'-'. date("d")-1;
you can subtract an integer to either thedate("Y") or date("m") to go back on years or months