EpochLab

SQL Date Formatter

Write a date literal for your database

One instant, rendered as a literal for PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, SQLite, BigQuery and Snowflake — plus how each spells 'now' and how each reads a Unix timestamp.

Questions people ask

The things that come up about sql date formatters, answered plainly.

Should I store timestamps with or without a time zone?

With, nearly always — PostgreSQL's timestamptz, SQL Server's datetimeoffset. A timestamp without a zone is a wall-clock reading, and the moment two servers disagree about their zone, so does your data.

How do I convert a Unix timestamp in SQL?

It differs per engine: to_timestamp() in PostgreSQL, FROM_UNIXTIME() in MySQL, DATEADD(second, …, '1970-01-01') in SQL Server, TIMESTAMP_SECONDS() in BigQuery. The page gives all of them with your value substituted.

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Julian days, Excel serials, GPS time, cron expressions and format validators.

Oracle Date ConverterThe seven-byte internal form, decoded — century and year stored excess-100, everything else plus one — plus the Julian day that `TO_CHAR(d,'J')` gives you.
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ISO Date ConverterThe extended form, the basic form, the week date and the ordinal date — all four ISO 8601 shapes for one instant, plus a parser for reading them back.
Excel Date ConverterA spreadsheet serial to a calendar date and back, in both the 1900 and 1904 systems — with the phantom leap day of 1900 flagged where it matters.

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