How to handle Query builder with date formats - cakephp

Question

I would like to show only the events for which startdate begins as of tomorrow. How can I proceed ? For the moment it's taking h:i:s into account as well.
public function display()
{
$now = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');
$this->loadModel('Events');
$events = $this->Events
->find()
->contain(['Categories', 'Venues'])
->limit(5)
->order(['events.startdate' => 'ASC'])
->where(['events.startdate >' => $now]);
$this->set('upcomingEvents', $events);
}
I tried this but it's not working:
public function display()
{
$now = date('Y-m-d');
$this->loadModel('Events');
$events = $this->Events
->find()
->contain(['Categories', 'Venues'])
->limit(5)
->order(['events.startdate' => 'ASC'])
->where(['date_format("%Y-%m-%d", events.startdate)' => $now]);
$this->set('upcomingEvents', $events);
}

Answer 1

No need to format the date in the query and lose the indexing functionality, instead compare against a datetime string that uses 00:00:00 for the time part, eg the start of the day.
You can achieve this easily with date('Y-m-d 00:00:00'), however that would be today, not tomorrow, you'd need to feed date() with a timestamp like date('Y-m-d 00:00:00', strtotime('+1 day')).
You can also use the datetime functionality that ships with CakePHP. Today \Cake\Chronos\Date::tomorrow() would create a date object representing 2021-10-06 where the time part will always be 00:00:00.
->where(['Events.startdate >=' => \Cake\Chronos\Date::tomorrow()])
The ORM will automatically format the date object accordingly to the column type, so for your I suppose DATETIME column, it would end up as 2021-10-06 00:00:00 in the SQL.
See also
Cookbook > Date & Time
Chronos Cookbook

Answer 2

Not sure if this is the right way to proceed, but it using function DATA_FORMAT()
DATE_FORMAT(events.startdate, "%Y-%m-%d")
So here is the query :
public function display()
{
$now = date('Y-m-d');
$this->loadModel('Events');
$events = $this->Events
->find()
->contain(['Categories', 'Venues'])
->limit(5)
->order(['events.startdate' => 'ASC'])
->where(['DATE_FORMAT(events.startdate, "%Y-%m-%d") >' => $now]);
$this->set('upcomingEvents', $events);
}
Or we can use it in a conditions array as well
public function display()
{
$this->loadModel('Events');
$events = $this->Events
->find('all', array('conditions' => array('DATE_FORMAT(events.startdate, "%Y-%m-%d") >' => date('Y-m-d'))))
->contain(['Categories', 'Venues'])
->limit(5)
->order(['events.startdate' => 'ASC']);
$this->set('upcomingEvents', $events);
}