Convert RSS pubdate to timestamp in mysql database

Question

My table feeds in mysql has a RSS timestring column named pubDate. I would like to add an additional column pubDate_Date and insert the RSS timestring as a real date.

I have created the additional column formatted as DATE and try to use the following code to update the new column with data, but somehow I cannot get it working. Am a newbie here.

function pubDateToMySql($str){
    return date('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime($str));
};

$sqlCommand = "SELECT * FROM feeds ORDER BY id ASC"; 
$query = mysqli_query($myConnection, $sqlCommand) or die (mysqli_error()); 
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_array($query)) { 
    $id = $row["id"];
    $pubDate = $row["pubDate"];
    $pubDate_Date = pubDateToMySql($pubDate); 
    $sql = mysqli_query($myConnection, "UPDATE feeds SET pubDate_Date = 
    $pubDate_Date WHERE ID = $id");
} 
mysqli_free_result($query);

Answer 1

To complete this post, this is how I ended up doing it:

UPDATE feeds SET pubDate_Date = STR_TO_DATE(pubDate, '%a, %d %b %Y %T')