Re: type casting reference?

On Jun 13, 2005, at 4:39 AM, stig erikson wrote:

> hi.
> i need to cast from timestamp to seconds (in the form of integer).
>
> i have a table with a column:
> expiretime timestamp
>
> i have tried the following, it gives errors as below:
> SELECT expiretime::float4 AS timeleft FROM table WHERE
> something='1234';
> ERROR: cannot cast type timestamp without time zone to real
>
> SELECT expiretime::text::float4 AS timeleft FROM table WHERE
> something='1234';
> ERROR: invalid input syntax for type real: "2005-06-12
> 21:21:24.368082"

Are you looking for the timestamp expressed as seconds from the Unix
epoch? If so, look at extract(epoch from expiretime).

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/7.4/interactive/functions-
datetime.html#FUNCTIONS-DATETIME-EXTRACT

Michael Glaesemann
grzm myrealbox com