How do I convert timestamp to date with Presto?

Luckily Presto has a wide range of conversion functions and they are listed in the docs.  Many of these allow us to specifically convert a timestamp type to a date type.

To test this out we can use Presto’s built-in current_timestamp function (an alias for the now() function) that returns the current system time as a timestamp:

presto> select current_timestamp as "Date & Time Here Now";
         Date & Time Here Now          
---------------------------------------
 2020-11-27 13:20:04.093 Europe/London 
(1 row)

To grab the date part of a timestamp we can simply cast to a date:

presto> select cast(current_timestamp as date) as "Today's date";
 Today's date 
--------------
 2020-11-27   
(1 row)

Or we can use date() which is an alias for cast(x as date):

presto> select date(current_timestamp) as "Today's date";
 Today's date 
--------------
 2020-11-27   
(1 row)

We can use date_format() which is one of Presto’s MySQL-compatible functions: 

presto:demo> select date_format(current_timestamp, '%Y%m%d') as "Today's date";
 Today's date  
----------
 20201127 
(1 row)

Finally we can use format_datetime() which uses a format string compatible with JodaTime’s DateTimeFormat pattern format:

presto:demo> select format_datetime(current_timestamp, 'Y-M-d') as "Date";
  Date  
----------
 2020-11-27 
(1 row)

The above 5 examples should allow you to convert timestamps to dates in any scenario.

Common Questions/Errors:

Why am I getting the following error: ‘>’ cannot be applied to date, varchar (10)

Answer: You are trying to compare a string literal in your query to a date type in your schema. The operator in the error can be any operator >,=,<,>=,<=. To fix that, you need to cast the string to a date type or use a function to parse the string to date.

Example error: select now() as time_now where current_date = '2021-06-01'

Example solution:

Option 1: Cast 
select now() as time_now where current_date > date '2021-06-01'

Option 2: Cast Explicit
select now() as time_now where current_date > Cast ( '2021-06-01' as Date)

Option 3: Parse iso8601 date
select now() as time_now where current_date > from_iso8601_date('2021-06-01')

Option 4: MySQL parser, Non Standard Date format using date_parse 
select now() as time_now where current_date > date_parse('01-06-2021','%d-%m-%Y')

Option 5: Java DataTime for parser, Non Standard Date format using date_parse 
select now() as time_now where current_date > parse_datetime('01-06-2021','dd-MM-YYYY')

How do I convert string with timestamp to a date?

Answer: You are trying to accurately convert a string of the format such as ‘2021-05-13T19:02:57.415006+01:00’ to date and use it in your query for comparison. You need to parse the string using either date_parse or parse_datetime

Example problem: Need to convert the following timestamp to date: ‘2021-05-13T19:02:57.415006+01:00’

Example solution:

Option 1: MySQL parser, Non Standard Date format using 
select date_parse('2021-05-13T19:02:57.415006','%Y-%m-%dT%h:%i:%s.%f') AT TIME ZONE '+01:00'

Option 2: Java DateTime format parser, Non Standard Date format using 
select parse_datetime('2021-05-13T19:02:57.415006+01:00','YYYY-MM-dd''T''HH:mm:ss.SSSSSSZ') 

Looking for related content? How To Convert Date String to Presto Date Format

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