"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

Convert the output from calendar into date format like this

$cal_date=17-08-2012;
$date=date('Y-m-d',strtotime($cal_date));
echo $date; //gives date as 2012-08-17

Now you can insert this date into mysql and do comparisons

From the MySQL manual, DATE uses the YYYY-MM-DD format

https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/datetime.html

The DATE type is used for values with a date part but no time part. MySQL retrieves and displays DATE values in 'YYYY-MM-DD' format. The supported range is '1000-01-01' to '9999-12-31'.

Invalid DATE, DATETIME, or TIMESTAMP values are converted to the “zero” value of the appropriate type ('0000-00-00' or '0000-00-00 00:00:00').

You can select dates out of your database and convert them to whatever format you want to display to your uses, but to store them you'll need to use the YYYY-MM-DD format that MySQL is expecting.

This can be done using STR_TO_DATE.

Example:

INSERT INTO useless_table (id, date_added) VALUES(
            1, STR_TO_DATE('03/08/2009', '%m/%d/%Y'));

EDIT: Please also consider MarkR's solution, because it's the right thing to do[tm].

If your column date_ordered is of type DATE, MySQL will store it in its own way. To display it in the format you want, you should use the function date_format():

https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/date-and-time-functions.html#function_date-format

e.g. For DD-MM-YYYY format, you want to use the format string '%d-%m-%Y'

select date_format (date_ordered,'%d-%m-%Y') from your_table;

If you want to store the date in that format, use a VARCHAR instead of a DATE type, but then you will have to typecast the string to a date before performing any other date-based functions on it. Better to let MySQL store the date how it wants, and convert it to the desired format when displaying.

Here is an example on how I imported the following table (see: http://www.sqlcourse2.com/items_ordered.html)

customerid  order_date   item        quantity  price
10330       30-Jun-1999  Pogo stick  1         28.00
10101       30-Jun-1999  Raft        1         58.00
...

into my DB:

create table items_ordered (
    customerid int(6),
    order_date date,
    item varchar(30),
    quantity int(6),
    price float(6,2)    
);
LOAD DATA INFILE '/home/korulis/Documents/sqltut2 - items_ordered.csv'
IGNORE INTO TABLE items_ordered
    FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '"'
    LINES TERMINATED BY '\n'-- '\r\n'  or '\n'
    IGNORE 1 LINES
(customerid, @var1, item, quantity, price)
SET order_date = STR_TO_DATE(@var1,'%d-%b-%Y');