CODEWITHSUNDEEP
postgresql
Amanda_Panda
Amanda_Panda

Reputation: 1186

After midnight times in postgresql

I have data from a text file I'm reading into a postgres 9.1 table, and the data looks like this:

451,22:30:00,22:30:00,San Jose,1
451,22:35:00,22:35:00,Santa Clara,2
451,22:40:00,22:40:00,Lawrence,3
451,22:44:00,22:44:00,Sunnyvale,4
451,22:49:00,22:49:00,Mountain View,5
451,22:53:00,22:53:00,San Antonio,6
451,22:57:00,22:57:00,California Ave,7
451,23:01:00,23:01:00,Palo Alto,8
451,23:04:00,23:04:00,Menlo Park,9
451,23:07:00,23:07:00,Atherton,10
451,23:11:00,23:11:00,Redwood City,11
451,23:15:00,23:15:00,San Carlos,12
451,23:18:00,23:18:00,Belmont,13
451,23:21:00,23:21:00,Hillsdale,14
451,23:24:00,23:24:00,Hayward Park,15
451,23:27:00,23:27:00,San Mateo,16
451,23:30:00,23:30:00,Burlingame,17
451,23:33:00,23:33:00,Broadway,18
451,23:38:00,23:38:00,Millbrae,19
451,23:42:00,23:42:00,San Bruno,20
451,23:47:00,23:47:00,So. San Francisco,21
451,23:53:00,23:53:00,Bayshore,22
451,23:58:00,23:58:00,22nd Street,23
451,24:06:00,24:06:00,San Francisco,24

It is from a timetable for a commuter rail line, Caltrain. I'm trying to query stations, to get train arrival and departure times. I did this several months ago in MySql, and I got

select * from trains as a, trains as b where a.trip_id=b.trip_id and a.st
op_id='San Antonio' and b.stop_id='San Carlos' and a.arrival_time < b.arrival_ti
me;

So far so good, pretty straightforward. However, when I tried copying the data into a postgres database, I got an error for the various columns that had times after midnight, either 24 or 25:00:00 something. However, if I change them to be 00:00:00 and 01:00:00 something, won't that mess with the query? A time after midnight will appear to be before the starting time? MySql apparently didn't have a problem with those times, and I'm not sure what to do. I'm thinking I should use the last column, or maybe convert the times to something that doesn't take into account PM/AM?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 802

Answers (1)

Dave Johnson
Dave Johnson

Reputation: 411

You should try using the interval type for the time columns. Those will keep track of the number of hours, minutes, and seconds instead of trying to record a time of day.

See the PostgreSQL documentation on dates and times.

An interval can have a time component greater than 24 hours, unlike the time datatype that is confined to 00:00 <= x <= 23:59.

Upvotes: 1

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