3.5. Date/Time Types

PostgreSQL supports the full set of SQL date and time types.

Table 3-10. Date/Time Types

TypeDescriptionStorageEarliestLatestResolution
timestamp without time zoneboth date and time8 bytes4713 BCAD 14650011 microsecond / 14 digits
timestamp [ with time zone ]both date and time8 bytes4713 BCAD 14650011 microsecond / 14 digits
intervalfor time intervals12 bytes-178000000 years178000000 years1 microsecond
datedates only4 bytes4713 BC32767 AD1 day
time [ without time zone ]times of day only8 bytes00:00:00.0023:59:59.991 microsecond
time with time zonetimes of day only12 bytes00:00:00.00+1223:59:59.99-121 microsecond

Note: Time zones, and time zone conventions, are influenced by political conventions, not just physical effects. Time zones have become somewhat standardized during the 1900's, but continue to be prone to arbitrary changes with time. PostgreSQL uses your operating system's underlying features to provide time zone support, and these systems usually contain information for only the time period 1902 through 2038 (corresponding to the full range of conventional Unix system time). timestamp with time zone will use time zone information only within that year range, and assumes that times are in UTC outside that range.

To ensure compatibility to earlier versions of PostgreSQL we also continue to provide datetime (equivalent to timestamp) and timespan (equivalent to interval), however support for these is now restricted to having an implicit translation to timestamp and 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 are encouraged to move any old ones over when appropriate. Any or all of these internal types might disappear in a future release.

3.5.1. Date/Time Input

Date and time input is accepted in almost any reasonable format, including ISO-8601, SQL-compatible, traditional PostgreSQL, 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 in ambiguous cases. 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 ISO style is the default but this default can be changed at compile time or at run time.

See Appendix A 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. Refer to Section 1.1.2.5 for more information. SQL requires the following syntax

type 'value'

but PostgreSQL is more flexible.

3.5.1.1. date

The following are possible inputs for the date type.

Table 3-11. Date Input

ExampleDescription
January 8, 1999Unambiguous
1999-01-08ISO-8601 format, preferred
1/8/1999US; read as August 1 in European mode
8/1/1999European; read as August 1 in US mode
1/18/1999US; read as January 18 in any mode
19990108ISO-8601 year, month, day
990108ISO-8601 year, month, day
1999.008Year and day of year
99008Year and day of year
January 8, 99 BCYear 99 before the Common Era

Table 3-12. Month Abbreviations

MonthAbbreviations
AprilApr
AugustAug
DecemberDec
FebruaryFeb
JanuaryJan
JulyJul
JuneJun
MarchMar
NovemberNov
OctoberOct
SeptemberSep, Sept

Note: The month May has no explicit abbreviation, for obvious reasons.

Table 3-13. Day of the Week Abbreviations

DayAbbreviation
SundaySun
MondayMon
TuesdayTue, Tues
WednesdayWed, Weds
ThursdayThu, Thur, Thurs
FridayFri
SaturdaySat

3.5.1.2. time [ without time zone ]

Per SQL99, this type can be referenced as time and as time without time zone.

The following are valid time inputs.

Table 3-14. Time Input

ExampleDescription
04:05:06.789ISO-8601
04:05:06ISO-8601
04:05ISO-8601
040506ISO-8601
04:05 AMSame as 04:05; AM does not affect value
04:05 PMSame as 16:05; input hour must be <= 12
zSame as 00:00:00
zuluSame as 00:00:00
allballsSame as 00:00:00

3.5.1.3. time with time zone

This type is defined by SQL92, but the definition exhibits properties which lead to questionable usefulness. In most cases, a combination of date, time, timestamp without time zone and timestamp with time zone should provide a complete range of date/time functionality required by any application.

time with time zone accepts all input also legal for the time type, appended with a legal time zone, as follows:

Table 3-15. Time With Time Zone Input

ExampleDescription
04:05:06.789-8ISO-8601
04:05:06-08:00ISO-8601
04:05-08:00ISO-8601
040506-08ISO-8601

Refer to Table 3-16 for more examples of time zones.

3.5.1.4. timestamp without time zone

Valid input for the timestamp without time zone 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

is a valid timestamp without time zone value that is ISO-compliant. In addition, the wide-spread format

January 8 04:05:06 1999 PST

is supported.

For timestamp without time zone, any explicit time zone specified in the input is silently swallowed. That is, the resulting date/time value is derived from the explicit date/time fields in the input value, and is not adjusted for time zone.

3.5.1.5. timestamp with time zone

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

is a valid timestamp value that is ISO-compliant. In addition, the wide-spread format

January 8 04:05:06 1999 PST

is supported.

Table 3-16. Time Zone Input

Time ZoneDescription
PSTPacific Standard Time
-8:00ISO-8601 offset for PST
-800ISO-8601 offset for PST
-8ISO-8601 offset for PST

3.5.1.6. interval

interval values can be written with the following syntax:

  Quantity Unit [Quantity Unit...] [Direction]
@ Quantity Unit [Quantity Unit...] [Direction]

where: Quantity is an integer (possibly signed); Unit is second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year, decade, century, millennium, or abbreviations or plurals of these units; Direction can be ago or empty. The at sign (@) is optional noise. The amounts of different units are implicitly added up with appropriate sign accounting.

Quantities of days, hours, minutes, and seconds can be specified without explicit unit markings. For example, '1 12:59:10' is read the same as '1 day 12 hours 59 min 10 sec'.

3.5.1.7. Special values

The following SQL-compatible functions can be used as date or time input for the corresponding data type: CURRENT_DATE, CURRENT_TIME, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP.

PostgreSQL also supports several special constants for convenience.

Table 3-17. Special Date/Time Constants

ConstantDescription
epoch1970-01-01 00:00:00+00 (Unix system time zero)
infinityLater than other valid times
-infinityEarlier than other valid times
invalidIllegal entry
nowCurrent transaction time
todayMidnight today
tomorrowMidnight tomorrow
yesterdayMidnight yesterday
zulu, allballs, z00:00:00.00 GMT
'now' is evaluated when the value is first interpreted.

Caution

As of PostgreSQL version 7.2, 'current' is no longer supported as a date/time constant. Previously, 'current' was stored as a special value, and evaluated to 'now' only when used in a math operation or type conversion.

3.5.2. Date/Time Output

Output formats can be set to one of the four styles ISO-8601, SQL (Ingres), traditional PostgreSQL, and German, using the SET DateStyle. The default is the ISO format.

Table 3-18. Date/Time Output Styles

Style SpecificationDescriptionExample
'ISO'ISO-8601 standard1997-12-17 07:37:16-08
'SQL'Traditional style12/17/1997 07:37:16.00 PST
'PostgreSQL'Original styleWed Dec 17 07:37:16 1997 PST
'German'Regional style17.12.1997 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 vice versa. (See also Section 3.5.1 for how this setting affects interpretation of input values.)

Table 3-19. Date Order Conventions

Style SpecificationDescriptionExample
Europeanday/month/year17/12/1997 15:37:16.00 MET
USmonth/day/year12/17/1997 07:37:16.00 PST

interval output looks like the input format, except 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:

3.5.3. 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:

To address these difficulties, we recommend using date/time types that contain both date and time when using time zones. We recommend not using the SQL92 type TIME WITH TIME ZONE (though it is supported by PostgreSQL for legacy applications and for compatibility with other RDBMS implementations). PostgreSQL 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 UTC, traditionally 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:

Note: If an invalid time zone is specified, the time zone becomes GMT (on most systems anyway).

Note: If the runtime option AUSTRALIAN_TIMEZONES is set then CST and EST refer to Australian time zones, not American ones.

3.5.4. 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 consistent enough to warrant coding into a date/time handler.