I have a table with two field in postgresql. One field is creation_time which is a timestamp with timezone and is filled with datetimes. Other field is foo which is filled by null values and I want to update this column by the epoch time of other column for each row.
How this is possible? I know that extract(epoch) can convert timestamp to epoch, but I don't know how to use it for my purpose.
This should work. foo should be of type bigint.
UPDATE table SET foo = EXTRACT(epoch FROM creation_time)
When inserting now() in a table, the written value only contains the date (e.g. 2017-12-20), but not the date and time as specified in the documentation.
See this SQLfiddle.
create table timetest (
id serial primary key,
mydate date
);
insert into timetest (mydate) values (
now());
Is there some specific command that should be passed to either write or retrieve also the time information?
You created mydate date as a date type column. date only represents the date fraction (unsurprisingly).
If you need both date and time use timestamp type instead.
References:
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/datatype-datetime.html
Image I have a table containing the following two columns:
timestampwithouttimezone (of type TIMESTAMP WITHOUT TIME ZONE)
utcoffset (of type INTEGER)
I want to convert those two column to a single one of type TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE. Can this be achieved using a ALTER TABLE ALTER COLUMN [column] SET DATE TYPE TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE query and the additional USING clause?
Or do I need a separate UPDATE query that takes the offset and sets the timezone of the timestamps? If that's the case, what would that query be? I can't find any examples that show how to update the timezone using an integer.
You could do that like this, assuming the offset is in hours:
ALTER TABLE mytab
ALTER timestampwithouttimezone
TYPE timestamp with time zone
USING CAST (timestampwithouttimezone::text || ' '
|| to_char(utcoffset, 'S00FM')
AS timestamp with time zone),
DROP utcoffset;
I'm trying to format the timestamps in my Postgres database to a certain format:
YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS
By doing:
update myTable set tds = to_char(tds, 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS')::timestamp;
I managed to set all the previously stored tds to this format. However, any newly added entry goes back to: YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS.MS since the default is set to now().
How do I change this so that newly added entries also have the format: YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS?
There is no format stored in a timestamp type. You can set its default to a timestamp truncated to the second at creation time
create table t (
tds timestamp default date_trunc('second', now())
)
Or alter the table
alter table t
alter column tds
set default date_trunc('second', now());
insert into t values (default);
INSERT 0 1
select * from t;
tds
---------------------
2014-03-11 19:24:11
If you just don't want to show the milliseconds part format the output
select to_char(now(), 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS');
to_char
---------------------
2014-03-11 19:39:40
The types timestamp or timestamptz optionally take a precision modifier p: timestamp(p).
To round to full seconds, set the default to:
now()::timestamp(0)
or:
now()::timestamptz(0)
Standard SQL functions CURRENT_TIMESTAMP (returns timestamptz) or LOCALTIMESTAMP (returns timestamp) allow the same precision modifier:
CURRENT_TIMESTAMP(0)
LOCALTIMESTAMP(0)
That's a bit shorter than calling date_trunc() - which truncates fractional seconds (may be what you really want!)
date_trunc('second', now())
Store timestamps as timestamptz (or timestamp), not as character type.
Finally, to make sure that ...
newly added entries also have the format: YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS
you could define your column as type timestamptz(0). This covers all values entered into that column, not just the default. But the rounding may introduce timestamps up to half a second in the future. If that can be an issue in any way, rather use date_trunc().
See #Clodoaldo's answer for instructions on to_char() and how to ALTER TABLE.
This related answer for in-depth information on timestamps and time zone handling:
Ignoring time zones altogether in Rails and PostgreSQL
I have created a table with a column date_time type (varchar2 (40) ) but when i try to insert the current system date and time the doesnt work it gives error (too many values). please tell me what's wrong with the insert statement.
create table HR (type varchar2 (20), raised_by number (6), complaint varchar2 (500), date_time varchar2(40))
insert into HR values ('request',6785,'good morning',sysdate,'YYYY/MM/DD:HH:MI:SSAM')
The immediate cause of the error is that you have too many values, as the message says; that is, more elements in your values clause than there are columns. It is better to explicitly list the column names to avoid future problems and confusion, so you're really doing this:
insert into HR (type, raised_by, complaint, date_time)
values ('request',6785,'good morning',sysdate,'YYYY/MM/DD:HH:MI:SSAM')
... sp you have four columns, but five values. You're trying to insert the current date/time as a string so you would need to use the to_char() function:
insert into HR (type, raised_by, complaint, date_time)
values ('request',6785,'good morning',
to_char(sysdate,'YYYY/MM/DD:HH:MI:SSAM'))
But it is bad practice to store a date (or any other structured data, such as a number) as a string. As the documentation notes:
Each value manipulated by Oracle Database has a data type. The data
type of a value associates a fixed set of properties with the value.
These properties cause Oracle to treat values of one data type
differently from values of another. For example, you can add values of
NUMBER data type, but not values of RAW data type.
If you use a string then you can put invalid values in. If you use a proper DATE data type then you cannot accidentally put an invalid or confusing value in. Oracle will also be able to optimise the use of the column, and will be able to compare values safely and efficiently. Although the format you're using is better than some, using string comparison you still can't easily compare two values to see which is earlier, so you can't properly order by the date_time column for example.
Say you inserted two rows with values 2013/11/15:09:00:00AM and 2013/11/15:08:00:00PM - which is earlier? You need to look at the AM/PM marker to realise the first one is earlier; with a string comparison you'd get it wrong because 8 would be sorted before 9. Using HH24 instead of HH and AM avoids that, but would still be less efficient than a true date.
If you need to store a date with a time component you can use the DATE data type, which has precision down to the second; or if you need fractional seconds too then you can use TIMESTAMP. Then your table and insert would be:
create table HR (type varchar2 (20), raised_by number (6),
complaint varchar2 (500), date_time date);
insert into HR (type, raised_by, complaint, date_time)
values ('request',6785,'good morning',sysdate);
You can still get the value in the format you wanted for display purposes as part of a query:
select type, raised_by, complaint,
to_char(date_time, 'YYYY/MM/DD:HH:MI:SSAM') as date_time
from HR
order by date_time;
TYPE RAISED_BY COMPLAINT DATE_TIME
-------------------- ---------- -------------------- ---------------------
request 6785 good morning 2013/11/15:08:44:35AM
Only treat a date as a string for display.
You can use TO_DATE() or TO_TIMESTAMP or To_char() function,
insert into HR values ('request',6785,'good morning',TO_DATE(sysdate, 'yyyy/mm/dd hh24:mi:ss'))
insert into HR values ('request',6785,'good morning',TO_TIMESTAMP(systimestamp, 'yyyy/mm/dd hh24:mi:ss'))
sysdate - It will give date with time.
systimestamp - It will give datetime with milliseconds.
To_date() - Used to convert string to date.
To_char() - Used to convert date to string.
Probably here you have to use To_char() because your table definition have varchar type for date_time column.
Use TIMESTAMP datatype for date_time. And while inserting use the current timestamp.
create table HR (type varchar2(20), raised_by number(6), complaint varchar2(500), date_time timestamp);
insert into HR values ('request',6785,'good morning', systimestamp);
For other options: http://psoug.org/reference/timestamp.html