How to write a SELECT clause containing an SQL function call with CodeIgniter's select() method

According to this post and this forum entry, adding false to your query will do the job:

$this->db->select("DATE_FORMAT(your_date_field, 'Year: %Y Month: %m Day: %d') AS formated_date", FALSE );

First off, those curly quotes around your date format expression look problematic. ‘% W% M% Y’

• Double quoted string with single quoted date format expression will work, but not all identifiers will be quoted and the hard-coded single quotes may not be portable/suitable to other SQL dialects.

  $this->db->select("name, DATE_FORMAT(date_end, '%W %M %Y') AS dateend");
  

  renders as:

  SELECT name, DATE_FORMAT(date_end, '%W %M %Y') AS dateend
  

• Turning off escaping via false as the second parameter of select() is the same as above but removes the magic quoting on the name column. This will also work for this specific scenario, but there are no protections against potential columns which share a name with reserved keywords.

  $this->db->select("name, DATE_FORMAT(date_end, '%W %M %Y') AS dateend", false);
  

  renders as:

  SELECT name, DATE_FORMAT (date_end, '% W% M% Y') AS dateend
  

• For full and portable quoting across all column names and values, turn off the automated escaping and explicitly apply quoting to all identifiers and values in the SELECT clause.

  $this->db->select(
      sprintf(
          '%1$s, DATE_FORMAT(%2$s, %3$s) AS %2$s',
          $this->db->escape_identifiers('name'),    // %1$s
          $this->db->escape_identifiers('date_end'),// %2$s
          $this->db->escape('%W %M %Y')             // %3$s
      ),
      false
  )
  

  renders as:

  SELECT `name`, DATE_FORMAT(`date_end`, '%W %M %Y') AS `date_end`