Get Maximum Date from Varchar Dates in MySQL

Let us first create a table −

mysql> create table DemoTable
(
   AdmissionDate varchar(100)
);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.76 sec)

Insert some records in the table using insert command −

mysql> insert into DemoTable values('Sunday, 11 August 2019');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.10 sec)
mysql> insert into DemoTable values('Friday, 18 October 2019');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.13 sec)
mysql> insert into DemoTable values('Thursday, 18 July 2019');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.23 sec)

Display all records from the table using select statement −

mysql> select *from DemoTable ;

This will produce the following output −

+-------------------------+
| AdmissionDate           |
+-------------------------+
| Sunday, 11 August 2019  |
| Friday, 18 October 2019 |
| Thursday, 18 July 2019  |
+-------------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Following is the query to get the maximum date from a list of varchar dates inserted above −

mysql> select max(str_to_date(AdmissionDate,'%W, %d %M %Y')) AS MaxDate from DemoTable;

This will produce the following output −

+------------+
| MaxDate    |
+------------+
| 2019-10-18 |
+------------+
1 row in set (0.04 sec)