Customizing Dates with CAST function using SQL Server - sql-server

How do I get the CAST function to convert...
2011-10-30 09:32:40.000
into
10-30
The Statement below includes the year (which I don't want)...
CAST(DateAdded AS date) AS CastToDate
There are multiple rows with different dates that will need to be converted to only show the month and day.

One option would be to convert your datetime value to text using conversion mask 110, which uses the format mm-dd-yy. Then, just take the left most 5 characters, which include the month and day:
SELECT
LEFT(CONVERT(varchar, date_col, 110), 5)
FROM yourTable;
10-30
Demo

Assuming you are on a reasonably modern version you can use the FORMAT function.
This is more readable than extracting a substring from the result of an operation with a cryptic numeric code.
select format(getdate(),'MM-dd')
Demo

Related

T SQL Conversion failed when converting date and/or time from character string from VARCHAR(MAX)

I'm using SQL Server 2014. I have a date stored as varchar(MAX) in the format of:
2019-02-18
However, I want it in the British format dd/mm/yyyy (103).
This is my SQL:
SELECT CONVERT(DATE, DateField, 103) AS "JobStartDate"
FROM tblTest
However, I keep getting this error:
Conversion failed when converting date and/or time from character string.
What am I missing?
Update: The date is initially stored as varchar max as it is coming from a 3rd party system. I have no control over this and I completly understand this is the wrong format, but this is what I have been given.
I have a date stored as varchar(MAX)
There's your problem right there.
Not only you are using the wrong data type to store dates, you are also using max which is a known performance killer.
The solution to the problem is to alter the table and store dates in a Date data type - but first, you must look up all the objects that depends on that column and make sure they will not break or change them as well.
Assuming this can't be done, or as a temporary workaround, you must first convert the data you have to Date, and then convert it back to a string representation of that date using the 103 style to get dd/mm/yyyy.
Since yyyy-mm-dd string format is not culture dependent with the date data type, you can simply do this:
SELECT CONVERT(char(10), TRY_CAST(DateField As Date), 103) As [JobStartDate]
FROM tblTest
Note I've used try_cast and not cast since the database can't stop you from storing values that can't be converted to dates in that column.
You want to format the DateField column and not convert it to date.
So first convert it to DATE and then apply the format:
SELECT FORMAT(CONVERT(DATE, DateField, 21), 'dd/MM/yyyy') AS JobStartDate
See the demo.

How to add an hour in timestamp in sql server (without Declare)

I want to add an hour in the parameter TimeStamp, but not with declare parameter i.e
DECLARE #datetime2 datetime2 = '2019-03-01T09:25:21.1+01:00'
SELECT DATEADD(hour,1,#datetime)
I have a column name TimeStamp in a table and i want to add in all data plus 1 hour.
The column
TimeStamp
2019-03-01T09:25:20.1+01:00
2019-03-01T09:25:21.1+01:00
2019-03-01T09:25:19.1+01:00
I try something like this
SELECT DATEADD(hour,1, TimeStamp), but i have an error
Conversion failed when converting date and/or time from character
string.
Any possible answers ??
Thanks
SELECT DATEADD(hour,1, TimeStamp) is correct
However, The format in TimeStamp is wrong,
So, cast it to DateTime2 First
CAST(TimeStamp as DateTime2)
OR
CAST('2019-03-01T09:25:20.1+01:00' as DateTime2)
So,
SELECT DATEADD(hour, 1, CAST(TimeStamp as DateTime2))
Conversion failed when converting date and/or time from character
string.
The error message means that column TimeStamp stored as a string. DATEADD expects a valid value that is date/datetime/datetime2 or can be converted into it from a string. Because a sample value look like DATETIME2, such extra conversion perhaps is needed:
SELECT DATEADD(hour,1, CAST(TimeStamp as datetime2))
Your syntax will be fine as defined.
It might be a value in your column that is not able to parse to datetime2 because it contains an invalid character.
You could add the ISDATE() to the expression to check if it is valid.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/functions/isdate-transact-sql?view=sql-server-2017
edit: forgot to mention you could parse before adding with try_cast or try_convert to datetime2
In Your Timestamp +01:00 represents the Time offset to GMT. You can convert this to your local time and then Add the Hours using DATEADD()
or Remove the Time Offset from the string and add one hour using DATEADD() As suggested by Others.
According to this https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/functions/cast-and-convert-transact-sql?view=sql-server-2017#date-and-time-styles
you have to convert the timestamp with timezone using type 127.
127 is the input format for:
ISO8601 with time zone Z.
yyyy-mm-ddThh:mi:ss.mmmZ (no spaces)
Note: For a milliseconds (mmm) value of 0, the millisecond decimal value will not display. For example, the value '2012-11-07T18:26:20.000 will display as '2012-11-07T18:26:20'.
select convert(datetime2, '2019-03-01T09:25:20.1+01:00', 127)
if you are not using convert and the 127 by using cast you may run in conversion problems depending on language settings of the users.
Maybe you are after this?
select dateadd(hour,1,convert(datetimeoffset, TimeStamp))
Best to not store dates and times as text though.
Edit: Note that his will retain your time zone information if that is important to you.

SQL Server compare datetime fields

I have a datetime field in my table that I need to use in a where clause.
The fieldname is DatumAanname
In my dataviewgrid it shows for example "16/12/2014 15:57:04"
I looked at the page from microsoft with all the datetime options for a convert, but this format does not seems to be on that page.
The closest format I can see there is "16 12 2014 15:57:04" which should be 113
I tried a query like this
SELECT o.DatumAanname,
(convert(DATETIME, '16 dec 2014 15:57:04:000', 113)),
(convert(DATETIME, '16 dec 2014 15:57:04', 113)),
(convert(DATETIME, o.DatumAanname, 113))
FROM vwOpdracht o
this returns 4 fields which all look exact the same
but when I do
where (convert(datetime, o.DatumAanname, 113)) = (convert(datetime, '16 dec 2014 15:57:04:000', 113))
it returns 0 records
What am I doing wrong here ?
Dates have no formats, they are native types with their own binary storage. Formats and conversions apply only when converting from/to string and they frequently cause problems if incompatible collations and cultures are used.
The best way to avoid problems is simply to remove strings entirely: use date-typed columns in the table and query using parameterized queries. Actually, if the date is stored as text in the table there is no generic and fault-proof way to acoid problems.
Pass strongly typed values instead of strings (eg DateTime in C#, date, datetime,datetime2 in T-SQL). For example:
where o.DatumAanname= #dateParam
will return matching entries if the values match.
If passing date parameters isn't possible, you should only use the unambiguous ISO8691 format, eg:
where o.DatumAanname = '2014-12-16T15:57:04'
If you want to pass date-only values you can use the unseparated format which is also unambiguous
where o.DatumAanname = '20141216'
One thing to note is that date values must match exactly, down to the millisecond. Typically dates are used in range queries where this isn't an issue. In equality queries though, this can be a problem.
You can avoid this by using datetime2(0) as the field type, which ensures that milliseconds aren't stored at all.
Another option is to use a range instead of an equality query, eg:
where o.DatumAanname between '2014-12-16T15:57:04' and '2014-12-16T15:57:04.999'
or
where o.DatumAanname between '2014-12-16T15:57:00' and '2014-12-16T15:57:59'
if you want minute-level precision

How to convert SQL Server's timestamp column to datetime format

As SQL Server returns timestamp like 'Nov 14 2011 03:12:12:947PM', is there some easy way to convert string to date format like 'Y-m-d H:i:s'.
So far I use
date('Y-m-d H:i:s',strtotime('Nov 14 2011 03:12:12:947PM'))
SQL Server's TIMESTAMP datatype has nothing to do with a date and time!
It's just a hexadecimal representation of a consecutive 8 byte integer - it's only good for making sure a row hasn't change since it's been read.
You can read off the hexadecimal integer or if you want a BIGINT. As an example:
SELECT CAST (0x0000000017E30D64 AS BIGINT)
The result is
400756068
In newer versions of SQL Server, it's being called RowVersion - since that's really what it is. See the MSDN docs on ROWVERSION:
Is a data type that exposes automatically generated, unique binary numbers within a database. rowversion is generally used as a mechanism
for version-stamping table rows. The
rowversion data type is just an incrementing number and does not
preserve a date or a time. To record a date or time, use a datetime2
data type.
So you cannot convert a SQL Server TIMESTAMP to a date/time - it's just not a date/time.
But if you're saying timestamp but really you mean a DATETIME column - then you can use any of those valid date formats described in the CAST and CONVERT topic in the MSDN help. Those are defined and supported "out of the box" by SQL Server. Anything else is not supported, e.g. you have to do a lot of manual casting and concatenating (not recommended).
The format you're looking for looks a bit like the ODBC canonical (style = 121):
DECLARE #today DATETIME = SYSDATETIME()
SELECT CONVERT(VARCHAR(50), #today, 121)
gives:
2011-11-14 10:29:00.470
SQL Server 2012 will finally have a FORMAT function to do custom formatting......
The simplest way of doing this is:
SELECT id,name,FROM_UNIXTIME(registration_date) FROM `tbl_registration`;
This gives the date column atleast in a readable format.
Further if you want to change te format click here.
Using cast you can get date from a timestamp field:
SELECT CAST(timestamp_field AS DATE) FROM tbl_name
Works fine, except this message:
Implicit conversion from data type varchar to timestamp is not allowed. Use the CONVERT function to run this query
So yes, TIMESTAMP (RowVersion) is NOT a DATE :)
To be honest, I fidddled around quite some time myself to find a way to convert it to a date.
Best way is to convert it to INT and compare. That's what this type is meant to be.
If you want a date - just add a Datetime column and live happily ever after :)
cheers mac
My coworkers helped me with this:
select CONVERT(VARCHAR(10), <tms_column>, 112), count(*)
from table where <tms_column> > '2012-09-10'
group by CONVERT(VARCHAR(10), <tms_column>, 112);
or
select CONVERT(DATE, <tms_column>, 112), count(*)
from table where <tms_column> > '2012-09-10'
group by CONVERT(DATE, <tms_column>, 112);
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
— Inigo Montoya
The timestamp has absolutely no relationship to time as marc_s originally said.
declare #Test table (
TestId int identity(1,1) primary key clustered
,Ts timestamp
,CurrentDt datetime default getdate()
,Something varchar(max)
)
insert into #Test (Something)
select name from sys.tables
waitfor delay '00:00:10'
insert into #Test (Something)
select name from sys.tables
select * from #Test
Notice in the output that Ts (hex) increments by one for each record, but the actual time has a gap of 10 seconds. If it were related to time then there would be a gap in the timestamp to correspond with the difference in the time.
for me works:
TO_DATE('19700101', 'yyyymmdd') + (TIME / 24 / 60 / 60)
(oracle DB)
Robert Mauro has the correct comment. For those who know the Sybase origins, datetime was really two separate integers, one for date, one for time, so timestamp aka rowversion could just be considered the raw value captured from the server. Much faster.
After impelemtation of conversion to integer
CONVERT(BIGINT, [timestamp]) as Timestamp
I've got the result like
446701117
446701118
446701119
446701120
446701121
446701122
446701123
446701124
446701125
446701126
Yes, this is not a date and time, It's serial numbers
Why not try FROM_UNIXTIME(unix_timestamp, format)?
I had the same problem with timestamp eg:'29-JUL-20 04.46.42.000000000 PM'. I wanted to turn it into 'yyyy-MM-dd' format. The solution that finally works for me is
SELECT TO_CHAR(mytimestamp, 'YYYY-MM-DD') FROM mytable;
I will assume that you've done a data dump as insert statements, and you (or whoever Googles this) are attempting to figure out the date and time, or translate it for use elsewhere (eg: to convert to MySQL inserts). This is actually easy in any programming language.
Let's work with this:
CAST(0x0000A61300B1F1EB AS DateTime)
This Hex representation is actually two separate data elements... Date and Time. The first four bytes are date, the second four bytes are time.
The date is 0x0000A613
The time is 0x00B1F1EB
Convert both of the segments to integers using the programming language of your choice (it's a direct hex to integer conversion, which is supported in every modern programming language, so, I will not waste space with code that may or may not be the programming language you're working in).
The date of 0x0000A613 becomes 42515
The time of 0x00B1F1EB becomes 11661803
Now, what to do with those integers:
Date
Date is since 01/01/1900, and is represented as days. So, add 42,515 days to 01/01/1900, and your result is 05/27/2016.
Time
Time is a little more complex. Take that INT and do the following to get your time in microseconds since midnight (pseudocode):
TimeINT=Hex2Int(HexTime)
MicrosecondsTime = TimeINT*10000/3
From there, use your language's favorite function calls to translate microseconds (38872676666.7 µs in the example above) into time.
The result would be 10:47:52.677
Some of them actually does covert to a date-time from SQL Server 2008 onwards.
Try the following SQL query and you will see for yourself:
SELECT CAST (0x00009CEF00A25634 AS datetime)
The above will result in 2009-12-30 09:51:03:000 but I have encountered ones that actually don't map to a date-time.
Not sure if I'm missing something here but can't you just convert the timestamp like this:
CONVERT(VARCHAR,CAST(ZEIT AS DATETIME), 110)

Sql Server string to date conversion

I want to convert a string like this:
'10/15/2008 10:06:32 PM'
into the equivalent DATETIME value in Sql Server.
In Oracle, I would say this:
TO_DATE('10/15/2008 10:06:32 PM','MM/DD/YYYY HH:MI:SS AM')
This question implies that I must parse the string into one of the standard formats, and then convert using one of those codes. That seems ludicrous for such a mundane operation. Is there an easier way?
Try this
Cast('7/7/2011' as datetime)
and
Convert(DATETIME, '7/7/2011', 101)
See CAST and CONVERT (Transact-SQL) for more details.
Run this through your query processor. It formats dates and/or times like so and one of these should give you what you're looking for. It wont be hard to adapt:
Declare #d datetime
select #d = getdate()
select #d as OriginalDate,
convert(varchar,#d,100) as ConvertedDate,
100 as FormatValue,
'mon dd yyyy hh:miAM (or PM)' as OutputFormat
union all
select #d,convert(varchar,#d,101),101,'mm/dd/yy'
union all
select #d,convert(varchar,#d,102),102,'yy.mm.dd'
union all
select #d,convert(varchar,#d,103),103,'dd/mm/yy'
union all
select #d,convert(varchar,#d,104),104,'dd.mm.yy'
union all
select #d,convert(varchar,#d,105),105,'dd-mm-yy'
union all
select #d,convert(varchar,#d,106),106,'dd mon yy'
union all
select #d,convert(varchar,#d,107),107,'Mon dd, yy'
union all
select #d,convert(varchar,#d,108),108,'hh:mm:ss'
union all
select #d,convert(varchar,#d,109),109,'mon dd yyyy hh:mi:ss:mmmAM (or PM)'
union all
select #d,convert(varchar,#d,110),110,'mm-dd-yy'
union all
select #d,convert(varchar,#d,111),111,'yy/mm/dd'
union all
select #d,convert(varchar,#d,12),12,'yymmdd'
union all
select #d,convert(varchar,#d,112),112,'yyyymmdd'
union all
select #d,convert(varchar,#d,113),113,'dd mon yyyy hh:mm:ss:mmm(24h)'
union all
select #d,convert(varchar,#d,114),114,'hh:mi:ss:mmm(24h)'
union all
select #d,convert(varchar,#d,120),120,'yyyy-mm-dd hh:mi:ss(24h)'
union all
select #d,convert(varchar,#d,121),121,'yyyy-mm-dd hh:mi:ss.mmm(24h)'
union all
select #d,convert(varchar,#d,126),126,'yyyy-mm-dd Thh:mm:ss:mmm(no spaces)'
In SQL Server Denali, you will be able to do something that approaches what you're looking for. But you still can't just pass any arbitrarily defined wacky date string and expect SQL Server to accommodate. Here is one example using something you posted in your own answer. The FORMAT() function and can also accept locales as an optional argument - it is based on .Net's format, so most if not all of the token formats you'd expect to see will be there.
DECLARE #d DATETIME = '2008-10-13 18:45:19';
-- returns Oct-13/2008 18:45:19:
SELECT FORMAT(#d, N'MMM-dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss');
-- returns NULL if the conversion fails:
SELECT TRY_PARSE(FORMAT(#d, N'MMM-dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss') AS DATETIME);
-- returns an error if the conversion fails:
SELECT PARSE(FORMAT(#d, N'MMM-dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss') AS DATETIME);
I strongly encourage you to take more control and sanitize your date inputs. The days of letting people type dates using whatever format they want into a freetext form field should be way behind us by now. If someone enters 8/9/2011 is that August 9th or September 8th? If you make them pick a date on a calendar control, then the app can control the format. No matter how much you try to predict your users' behavior, they'll always figure out a dumber way to enter a date that you didn't plan for.
Until Denali, though, I think that #Ovidiu has the best advice so far... this can be made fairly trivial by implementing your own CLR function. Then you can write a case/switch for as many wacky non-standard formats as you want.
UPDATE for #dhergert:
SELECT TRY_PARSE('10/15/2008 10:06:32 PM' AS DATETIME USING 'en-us');
SELECT TRY_PARSE('15/10/2008 10:06:32 PM' AS DATETIME USING 'en-gb');
Results:
2008-10-15 22:06:32.000
2008-10-15 22:06:32.000
You still need to have that other crucial piece of information first. You can't use native T-SQL to determine whether 6/9/2012 is June 9th or September 6th.
SQL Server (2005, 2000, 7.0) does not have any flexible, or even non-flexible, way of taking an arbitrarily structured datetime in string format and converting it to the datetime data type.
By "arbitrarily", I mean "a form that the person who wrote it, though perhaps not you or I or someone on the other side of the planet, would consider to be intuitive and completely obvious." Frankly, I'm not sure there is any such algorithm.
Use this:
SELECT convert(datetime, '2018-10-25 20:44:11.500', 121) -- yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss.mmm
And refer to the table in the official documentation for the conversion codes.
For this problem the best solution I use is to have a CLR function in Sql Server 2005 that uses one of DateTime.Parse or ParseExact function to return the DateTime value with a specified format.
Short answer:
SELECT convert(date, '10/15/2011 00:00:00', 101) as [MM/dd/YYYY]
Other date formats can be found at SQL Server Helper > SQL Server Date Formats
Took me a minute to figure this out so here it is in case it might help someone:
In SQL Server 2012 and better you can use this function:
SELECT DATEFROMPARTS(2013, 8, 19);
Here's how I ended up extracting the parts of the date to put into this function:
select
DATEFROMPARTS(right(cms.projectedInstallDate,4),left(cms.ProjectedInstallDate,2),right( left(cms.ProjectedInstallDate,5),2)) as 'dateFromParts'
from MyTable
The most upvoted answer here are guravg's and Taptronic's. However, there's one contribution I'd like to make.
The specific format number they showed from 0 to 131 may vary depending on your use-case (see full number list here), the input number can be a nondeterministic one, which means that the expected result date isn't consistent from one SQL SERVER INSTANCE to another, avoid using the cast a string approach for the same reason.
Starting with SQL Server 2005 and its compatibility level of 90,
implicit date conversions became nondeterministic. Date conversions
became dependent on SET LANGUAGE and SET DATEFORMAT starting with
level 90.
Non deterministic values are 0-100, 106, 107, 109, 113, 130. which may result in errors.
The best option is to stick to a deterministic setting, my current preference are ISO formats (12, 112, 23, 126), as they seem to be the most standard for IT people use cases.
Convert(varchar(30), '210510', 12) -- yymmdd
Convert(varchar(30), '20210510', 112) -- yyyymmdd
Convert(varchar(30), '2021-05-10', 23) -- yyyy-mm-dd
Convert(varchar(30), '2021-05-10T17:01:33.777', 126) -- yyyy-mm-ddThh:mi:ss.mmm (no spaces)
This page has some references for all of the specified datetime conversions available to the CONVERT function. If your values don't fall into one of the acceptable patterns, then I think the best thing is to go the ParseExact route.
Personally if your dealing with arbitrary or totally off the wall formats, provided you know what they are ahead of time or are going to be then simply use regexp to pull the sections of the date you want and form a valid date/datetime component.
If you want SQL Server to try and figure it out, just use CAST
CAST('whatever' AS datetime)
However that is a bad idea in general. There are issues with international dates that would come up. So as you've found, to avoid those issues, you want to use the ODBC canonical format of the date. That is format number 120, 20 is the format for just two digit years.
I don't think SQL Server has a built-in function that allows you to provide a user given format. You can write your own and might even find one if you search online.
convert string to datetime in MSSQL implicitly
create table tmp
(
ENTRYDATETIME datetime
);
insert into tmp (ENTRYDATETIME) values (getdate());
insert into tmp (ENTRYDATETIME) values ('20190101'); --convert string 'yyyymmdd' to datetime
select * from tmp where ENTRYDATETIME > '20190925' --yyyymmdd
select * from tmp where ENTRYDATETIME > '20190925 12:11:09.555'--yyyymmdd HH:MIN:SS:MS
You can easily achieve this by using this code.
SELECT Convert(datetime, Convert(varchar(30),'10/15/2008 10:06:32 PM',102),102)
This code solve my problem :
convert(date,YOUR_DATE,104)
If you are using timestamp you can you the below code :
convert(datetime,YOUR_DATE,104)
dateadd(day,0,'10/15/2008 10:06:32 PM')

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