Sqlite: CURRENT_TIMESTAMP is in GMT, not the timezone of the machine

sql sqlite timezone timestamp
BrianH picture BrianH · Dec 19, 2008 · Viewed 182.8k times · Source

I have a sqlite (v3) table with this column definition:

"timestamp" DATETIME DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP

The server that this database lives on is in the CST time zone. When I insert into my table without including the timestamp column, sqlite automatically populates that field with the current timestamp in GMT, not CST.

Is there a way to modify my insert statement to force the stored timestamp to be in CST? On the other hand, it is probably better to store it in GMT (in case the database gets moved to a different timezone, for example), so is there a way I can modify my select SQL to convert the stored timestamp to CST when I extract it from the table?

Answer

BrianH picture BrianH · Dec 19, 2008

I found on the sqlite documentation (https://www.sqlite.org/lang_datefunc.html) this text:

Compute the date and time given a unix timestamp 1092941466, and compensate for your local timezone.

SELECT datetime(1092941466, 'unixepoch', 'localtime');

That didn't look like it fit my needs, so I tried changing the "datetime" function around a bit, and wound up with this:

select datetime(timestamp, 'localtime')

That seems to work - is that the correct way to convert for your timezone, or is there a better way to do this?

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