Date comparison working as long as time is 00:00:00 - php

Question

this is my events script that pulls out appointments for the next 7 days, it appears to work ok, but only under one condition........The dates and times are held in the mysql db in datetime format so 2013-12-23 08:30:00 . My script prints out each day and finds appointments for that day for customers that are dropping off or picking up things. The mysql looks through the db and matches the customers with the dropping off or picking up fields to the date being printed and adds them in the div below the date.
The problem I am having is that if the time is set to anything other than 00:00:00 it doesn't pickup that customer for that day. How do I get the comparison to ignore the time and only use the date ?.
// Date box container
echo '<div class="dateboxcontainer">';
// Loop through and create a date for the next 7 days
$days = new DatePeriod(new DateTime, new DateInterval('P1D'), 7);
foreach ($days as $day) {
echo '<div class="datebox">';
echo '<div class="topdate">';
echo strtoupper($day->format('D d')) . PHP_EOL;
echo '</div>';
// Get the names for each day
$theday = strtoupper($day->format('Y-m-d'));
$sqldate = <<<SQL
SELECT *
FROM `jobdetails`
WHERE datedroppingoff = '$theday' OR datepickingup = '$theday'
SQL;
if(!$resultdate = $db->query($sqldate)){
die('There was an error running the query [' . $db->error . ']');
}
while($rowdate = $resultdate->fetch_assoc()){
echo $rowdate['name'];
}
//
echo '</div>';
}
echo '</div>';
//

Answer 1

What you are doing right now is comparing date/time values to just date values. This comparison would fail if the time part is anything other than midnight.
You can fix the comparison by using the DATE() MySql function to compare apples with apples:
WHERE DATE(datedroppingoff) = '$theday' OR DATE(datepickingup) = '$theday'
There are other ways to do the same, for example
WHERE DATEDIFF(datedroppingoff, '$theday') = 0 OR ...
If you had a $nextday value at hand you could also do
WHERE (datedroppingoff >= '$theday' AND datedroppingoff < '$nextday') OR ...

Answer 2

You are storing a specific time and day in mySQL, but only search for a date in your SQL query. As mySQL does not understand the difference between you wanting to search for a complete day or a specific point in time, mySQL assumes you are looking for the day at time 0:00:00.
You have a few options, you could search for a time period (pseudo code, check the borders yourself):
WHERE datedroppingoff > '$theday' AND datedroppingoff < '$theday'+1
another option is to store the date and time in separate db fields. That way you can keep your SQL queries simpler.
Good luck.