TIMESTAMP / TIMESTAMPTZ

On this page

The TIMESTAMP and TIMESTAMPTZ data types stores a date and time pair in UTC.

Time Zone Details

TIMESTAMP has two variants:

• TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE converts TIMESTAMP values from UTC to the client's session time zone (unless another time zone is specified for the value). However, it is conceptually important to note that TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE does not store any time zone data.

• TIMESTAMP WITHOUT TIME ZONE presents all TIMESTAMP values in UTC.

The difference between these two types is that TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE uses the client's session time zone, while the other simply does not. This behavior extends to functions like now() and extract() on TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE values.

Best Practices

We recommend always using the ...WITH TIME ZONE variant because the ...WITHOUT TIME ZONE variant can sometimes lead to unexpected behaviors when it ignores a session offset.

However, we also recommend you avoid setting a session time for your database. Instead, convert values from the default time zone (UTC) on the client side.

Aliases

In CockroachDB, the following are aliases:

• TIMESTAMP, TIMESTAMP WITHOUT TIME ZONE
• TIMESTAMPTZ, TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE

Syntax

A constant value of type TIMESTAMP/TIMESTAMPTZ can be expressed using an interpreted literal, or a string literal annotated with type TIMESTAMP/TIMESTAMPTZ or coerced to type TIMESTAMP/TIMESTAMPTZ.

TIMESTAMP constants can be expressed using the following string literal formats:

To express a TIMESTAMPTZ value (with time zone offset from UTC), use the following format: TIMESTAMPTZ '2016-01-25 10:10:10.555555-05:00'

When it is unambiguous, a simple unannotated string literal can also be automatically interpreted as type TIMESTAMP or TIMESTAMPTZ.

Note that the fractional portion is optional and is rounded to microseconds (6 digits after decimal) for compatibility with the PostgreSQL wire protocol.

Size

A TIMESTAMP column supports values up to 12 bytes in width, but the total storage size is likely to be larger due to CockroachDB metadata.

Examples

> CREATE TABLE timestamps (a INT PRIMARY KEY, b TIMESTAMPTZ);

> SHOW COLUMNS FROM timestamps;

+-------+--------------------------+-------+---------+
| Field |           Type           | Null  | Default |
+-------+--------------------------+-------+---------+
| a     | INT                      | false | NULL    |
| b     | TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE | true  | NULL    |
+-------+--------------------------+-------+---------+
(2 rows)

> INSERT INTO timestamps VALUES (1, TIMESTAMPTZ '2016-03-26 10:10:10-05:00'), (2, TIMESTAMPTZ '2016-03-26');

> SELECT * FROM timestamps;

+---+---------------------------+
| a |             b             |
+---+---------------------------+
| 1 | 2016-03-26 15:10:10+00:00 |
| 2 | 2016-03-26 00:00:00+00:00 |
+---+---------------------------+
# Note that the first timestamp is UTC-05:00, which is the equivalent of EST.

Supported Casting & Conversion

TIMESTAMP values can be cast to any of the following data types:

See Also

Data Types

Was this helpful?