How can I always get the full period when grouping by week in PostgreSQL? - postgresql

Question

I'm used to do the following syntax when analysing weekly data:
select week(creation_date)::date as week,
count(*) as n
from table_1
where creation_date > current_date - 30
group by 1
However, by doing this I will get just part of the first week.
Is there any smart way to alway get a whole week in the beginning?
Like get the first day of the week I would get half of.

Answer 1

First off you need to define what you mean by "week". This is more difficult than it appears. While humans have an intuitive since of a week, computers are just not that smart. There are 2 common conventions: the ISO-8601 Standard and, for lack of a better term, Traditional. ISO-8601 defines a week as always beginning on Monday and always containing 7 days. Traditional weeks begin on Sunday (usually) but may have weeks with less than 7 days. This results from having the 1st week of the year beginning on 1-Jan regardless of day of week. Thus the 1st and/or last weeks may have less than 7 days. ISO-8601 throws it own curve into the mix: the 1st week of the year begins on the week containing 4-Jan. Thus the last days of Dec may be in week 1 of the next year and the first days Jan may be in week 52/53 of the prior year.
All the below assume the ISO-8061.
Secondly there is no week function in Postgres. In you need extract function. So for this particular case:
select extract(week from creation_date)::integer as week, ...
Finally, your predicate (current_date - 30) ensures you will unusually not begin on the 1st of the week. To get the correct date take that result back 1 week, then go forward to the next Monday.
with days_to_monday (day_adj) as
( values ('{7,6,5,4,3,2,1}'::int[]) )
select current_date - 30
, current_date - 30 - 7 + day_adj[extract (isodow from current_date - 30 )]
from table_1 cross join days_to_monday;
The CTE establishes an array which for a given day of the week contains the number of days need to the next Monday. That main query extracts the day of week of current date and uses that to index the array. The corresponding value is added to get the proper date.
Putting that together with your original query to arrive at:
with next_week (monday) as
( values (current_date - 30 - 7
+ ('{7,6,5,4,3,2,1}'::int[])[extract (isodow from current_date - 30 )])
)
select extract(week from creation_date) as week,
count(*) as n
from table_1
where creation_date >= (select monday from next_week)
group by 1
order by 1;
For full example see fiddle.