SQL TO_TIMESTAMP

TO_DATE's counterpart for timestamps — parses text into a full date-and-time value using an explicit format.

What & Why

TO_TIMESTAMP(text, format) works exactly like TO_DATE, but produces a full TIMESTAMP — parsing time-of-day components (hours, minutes, seconds) in addition to the date.

See How It Works

BUSINESS QUESTION

Growth checks that a user's stored signup moment survives an epoch round trip.

id	created_at	country	channel	plan	activated_at	churned_at
101	2024-01-15 09:10:00+00	US	organic	pro	2024-01-16 14:25:00+00	NULL
102	2024-02-10 11:05:00+00	CA	paid	free	NULL	2024-03-20 10:00:00+00
103	2024-03-12 16:35:00+00	GB	referral	pro	2024-03-13 08:15:00+00	NULL
104	2024-04-01 13:20:00+00	US	organic	free	2024-04-03 12:00:00+00	NULL

EXAMPLE QUERY

SELECT
  id AS user_id,
  EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM created_at) AS epoch_seconds,
  TO_TIMESTAMP(EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM created_at)) AS parsed_created_at
FROM growth.users
ORDER BY user_id;

RESULT — exact output from the displayed Queryflo rows

user_id	epoch_seconds	parsed_created_at
101	1705309800.000000	2024-01-15 09:10:00+00
102	1707563100.000000	2024-02-10 11:05:00+00
103	1710261300.000000	2024-03-12 16:35:00+00
104	1711977600.000000	2024-04-01 13:20:00+00

The epoch round trip reproduces every displayed signup moment.

Now You Try

Practice this concept

Growth wants signup epoch seconds converted back into typed timestamps.

Available schema

growth

Prefix tables with growth.table_name.

user_idepoch_secondsparsed_created_at

growth.users

Column	Type
id	integer
created_at	timestamp with time zone
country	text
channel	text
plan	text
activated_at	timestamp with time zone
churned_at	timestamp with time zone
legacy_user_code	text

query.sql

Intermediate business practice