I had the need to convert a MySQL datetime time stamp into a format accepted by the RSS 2.0 specification. To get the first part, you can do a SQL query like the following:
1  | SELECT DATE_FORMAT(dateTimeColumn, '%a, %d %b %Y %T') AS rssPubDate FROM yourTable  | 
After that, you need to get the timezone, which can be accomplished by using this:
1  | $timeZone = date('T');  | 
So lets say you store the rssPubDate from MySQL in a variable called $rssPubDate, all you need to do is $rssPubDate .= ” {$timeZone}”;
That’s it! You now have a RFC-822 compliant time stamp.