Date/Time Types
PostgreSQL supports the full set of SQL date and time types.
Tabla 7. PostgreSQL Date/Time Types
| Type | Description | Storage | Earliest | Latest | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| timestamp | for data containing both date and time | 8 bytes | 4713 BC | AD 1465001 | 1 microsec / 14 digits |
| interval | for time intervals | 12 bytes | -178000000 years | 178000000 years | 1 mircosecond |
| date | for data containing only dates | 4 bytes | 4713 BC | 32767 AD | 1 day |
| time | for data containing only times of the day | 4 bytes | 00:00:00.00 | 23:59:59.99 | 1 microsecond |
 | To ensure compatibility to earlier versions of PostgreSQL we also continue to provide datetime (equivalent to timestamp) and timespan (equivalent to interval). The types abstime and reltime are lower precision types which are used internally. You are discouraged from using any of these types in new applications and move any old ones over when appropriate. Any or all of these type might disappear in a future release. |
Date/Time Input
Date and time input is accepted in almost any reasonable format, including ISO-compatible, SQL-compatible, traditional Postgres, and others. The ordering of month and day in date input can be ambiguous, therefore a setting exists, to specify how it should be interpreted. The command SET DateStyle TO 'US' or SET DateStyle TO 'NonEuropean' specifies the variant "month before day", the command SET DateStyle TO 'European' sets the variant "day before month". The former is the default.
See ayuda de fecha/hora for the exact parsing rules of date/time input and for the recognized time zones.
Remember that any date or time input needs to be enclosed into single quotes, like text strings.
date
The following are possible inputs for the date type.
Tabla 8. PostgreSQL Date Input
| Example | Description |
|---|---|
| January 8, 1999 | Unambiguous |
| 1999-01-08 | ISO-8601 format, preferred |
| 1/8/1999 | US; read as August 1 in European mode |
| 8/1/1999 | European; read as August 1 in US mode |
| 1/18/1999 | US; read as January 18 in any mode |
| 1999.008 | Year and day of year |
| 19990108 | ISO-8601 year, month, day |
| 990108 | ISO-8601 year, month, day |
| 1999.008 | Year and day of year |
| 99008 | Year and day of year |
| January 8, 99 BC | Year 99 before the common era |
Tabla 9. PostgreSQL Month Abbreviations
| Month | Abbreviations |
|---|---|
| April | Apr |
| August | Aug |
| December | Dec |
| February | Feb |
| January | Jan |
| July | Jul |
| June | Jun |
| March | Mar |
| November | Nov |
| October | Oct |
| September | Sep, Sept |
| The month May has no explicit abbreviation, for obvious reasons. |
time
The following are valid time inputs.
timestamp
Valid input for the timestamp type consists of a concatenation of a date and a time, followed by an optional AD or BC, followed by an optional time zone. (See below.) Thus
1999-01-08 04:05:06 -8:00 |
January 8 04:05:06 1999 PST |
interval
intervals can be specified with the following syntax:
Quantity Unit [Quantity Unit...] [Direction] @ Quantity Unit [Direction] |
Special values
The following SQL-compatible functions can be used as date or time input for the corresponding datatype: CURRENT_DATE, CURRENT_TIME, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP.
PostgreSQL also supports several special constants for convenience.
Tabla 13. PostgresSQL Special Date/Time Constants
| Constant | Description |
|---|---|
| current | Current transaction time, deferred |
| epoch | 1970-01-01 00:00:00+00 (Unix system time zero) |
| infinity | Later than other valid times |
| -infinity | Earlier than other valid times |
| invalid | Illegal entry |
| now | Current transaction time |
| today | Midnight today |
| tomorrow | Midnight tomorrow |
| yesterday | Midnight yesterday |
Date/Time Output
Output formats can be set to one of the four styles ISO-8601, SQL (Ingres), traditional Postgres, and German, using the SET DateStyle. The default is the ISO format.
Tabla 14. PostgreSQL Date/Time Output Styles
| Style Specification | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 'ISO' | ISO-8601 standard | 1997-12-17 07:37:16-08 |
| 'SQL' | Traditional style | 12/17/1997 07:37:16.00 PST |
| 'Postgres' | Original style | Wed Dec 17 07:37:16 1997 PST |
| 'German' | Regional style | 17.12.1997 07:37:16.00 PST |
The output of the date and time styles is of course only the date or time part in accordance with the above examples
The SQL style has European and non-European (US) variants, which determines whether month follows day or vica versa. (See also above at Date/Time Input, how this setting affects interpretation of input values.)
Tabla 15. PostgreSQL Date Order Conventions
| Style Specification | Example | |
|---|---|---|
| European | 17/12/1997 15:37:16.00 MET | |
| US | 12/17/1997 07:37:16.00 PST |
interval output looks like the input format, expect that units like week or century are converted to years and days. In ISO mode the output looks like
[ Quantity Units [ ... ] ] [ Days ] Hours:Minutes [ ago ] |
There are several ways to affect the appearance of date/time types:
The PGDATESTYLE environment variable used by the backend directly on postmaster startup.
The PGDATESTYLE environment variable used by the frontend libpq on session startup.
SET DATESTYLE SQL command.
Time Zones
PostgreSQL endeavors to be compatible with SQL92 definitions for typical usage. However, the SQL92 standard has an odd mix of date and time types and capabilities. Two obvious problems are:
Although the date type does not have an associated time zone, the time type can or does.
The default time zone is specified as a constant integer offset from GMT/UTC.
To address these difficulties, PostgreSQL associates time zones only with date and time types which contain both date and time, and assumes local time for any type containing only date or time. Further, time zone support is derived from the underlying operating system time zone capabilities, and hence can handle daylight savings time and other expected behavior.
PostgreSQL obtains time zone support from the underlying operating system for dates between 1902 and 2038 (near the typical date limits for Unix-style systems). Outside of this range, all dates are assumed to be specified and used in Universal Coordinated Time (UTC).
All dates and times are stored internally in Universal UTC, alternately known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Times are converted to local time on the database server before being sent to the client frontend, hence by default are in the server time zone.
There are several ways to affect the time zone behavior:
The TZ environment variable used by the backend directly on postmaster startup as the default time zone.
The PGTZ environment variable set at the client used by libpq to send time zone information to the backend upon connection.
The SQL command SET TIME ZONE sets the time zone for the session.
If an invalid time zone is specified, the time zone becomes GMT (on most systems anyway).
| If the compiler option USE_AUSTRALIAN_RULES is set then EST refers to Australia Eastern Std Time, which has an offset of +10:00 hours from UTC. |
Internals
PostgreSQL uses Julian dates for all date/time calculations. They have the nice property of correctly predicting/calculating any date more recent than 4713BC to far into the future, using the assumption that the length of the year is 365.2425 days.
Date conventions before the 19th century make for interesting reading, but are not consistant enough to warrant coding into a date/time handler.