Re: Inputting relative datetimes

On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 4:32 PM, Jim Nasby <jim(at)nasby(dot)net> wrote:
> On Aug 25, 2011, at 5:08 AM, Dean Rasheed wrote:
>>> Funny you should mention intervals...
>>>
>>> timestamptz 'today' - interval '5 days'
>>> timestamptz 'now' + interval '2 hours'
>>>
>>
>> Yes, but what I am trying to achieve is a way of entering such
>> relative timestamps using a single input value, so that absolute and
>> relative timestamps can both be bound to a SQL query using just one
>> variable.
>
> Even if the community doesn't want to add this to core, I think it would be a great add-on to put on PGXN. If you don't feel up to writing it themselves, perhaps you would pay one of the consulting companies to do it for them?

Frankly, our current date parsing code is pretty darn strange and
flaky. If nobody's found the energy to rationalize that, what are the
chances that we can add a whole bunch more functionality without also
adding a whole bunch more bugs? For examples of the sorts of things
we haven't gotten around to fixing, see:

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2011-03/msg01295.php

Another problem here is that it seems possible, even likely, that
everyone will have their own particular flavor of what they'd like to
see accepted: two weeks ago, a week ago Tuesday, next Saturday, last
Friday, two weeks from Saturday, Christmas plus three fortnights...
if it weren't already spaghetti code... give it time. I'm not
necessarily opposed to the idea (especially as a contrib module), but
I'm a little nervous that we might be overestimating the extent to
which Dean's needs are universal.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company