Fetching record of the day

On Mon, Apr 03, 2000 at 09:03:44PM -0700, Gary Hoffman wrote:

To the PostGresQL mastermind:

So, in general, here's what I want to do:

select [stuff] from [table] where date(startdate) = date(today)

Several approaches I have tried have all died because of the nulls stored
in the datetime-type field startdate.

Please suggest a workable solution that you have tested. The best one
(that works) gets their website listed on my "link of the day". What a
deal!

Gee, Gary, making demands when begging for help is _not_ usually the
way to do things. People might think you're just a lazy bum, trying
to get them to do your work for you. I'm going to be generous, just
this once, since I always test what I suggest (unless it's trivially
obvious). However, since you're being less than cordial, I'm just going
to post the transcript of what works, instead of my usual transcript
plus analysis of _why_ it works:

reedstrm=> \d test
Table    = test
+----------------------------------+----------------------------------+-------+
|              Field               |              Type                | Length|
+----------------------------------+----------------------------------+-------+
| d                                | datetime                         |     8 |
| t                                | text                             |   var |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------------+-------+
reedstrm=> select * from test;
d                           |t         
----------------------------+----------
Tue Apr 04 10:04:57 2000 CDT|Today     
                            |<- a null 
Thu Mar 16 15:10:54 2000 CST|not a null
(3 rows)

reedstrm=> select * from test where date(coalesce(d,'1/1/100')) = date(now());
d |t
----------------------------+-----
Tue Apr 04 10:04:57 2000 CDT|Today
(1 row)

reedstrm=>

HTH,
Ross
--
Ross J. Reedstrom, Ph.D., <reedstrm@rice.edu>
NSBRI Research Scientist/Programmer
Computer and Information Technology Institute
Rice University, 6100 S. Main St., Houston, TX 77005

Hello Gary,

What I would do (everyone on list groans) is store the date as a string in
YYYY-MM-DD
format. Actually, I always store dates that way. Should you decide you
want to do that, I have a date validation function I could send you (written
in VB (sorry)).

Good luck
David Boerwinkle

-----Original Message-----
From: Gary Hoffman <ghoffman@ucsd.edu>
To: pgsql-general@postgresql.org <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
Date: Tuesday, April 04, 2000 12:21 AM
Subject: [GENERAL] Fetching record of the day

Gary,
test=> create table abc (startdate datetime, stuff text);
CREATE
test=> insert into abc values ('@01/03/00','http://www.is.com.fj/&#39;);
INSERT 7146378 1
test=> insert into abc values (NULL,'http://www.yellowpages.com.fj/&#39;);
INSERT 7146379 1
test=> insert into abc values
('@05/04/00','http://www.fiji-online.com.fj/&#39;);
INSERT 7146380 1
test=> select * from abc;
startdate |stuff
------------------------------+------------------------------
Wed 01 Mar 00:00:00 2000 FJDST|http://www.is.com.fj/
|http://www.yellowpages.com.fj/
Wed 05 Apr 00:00:00 2000 FJT |http://www.fiji-online.com.fj/
(3 rows)
test=> select stuff from abc
where date_trunc('day',startdate) = date_trunc('day',current_timestamp)
and not null = startdate;
stuff
------------------------------
http://www.fiji-online.com.fj/
(1 row)

Do I win?
John Henderson

-----Original Message-----
From: Gary Hoffman <ghoffman@ucsd.edu>
To: pgsql-general@postgresql.org <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
Date: Tuesday, April 04, 2000 4:51
Subject: [GENERAL] Fetching record of the day

Hello all. Does anyone have a PostgreSQL startup / shutdown script for a
freeBSD machine? I have one for a linux machine, but I am having trouble
converting it to work with the BSD environment. My knowledge of the BSD
platform is very limited. I have frequently seen messages on this list from
users of PostgreSQL on BSD, so if anyone could share a script I would be
very appreciative. Thanks!

-B

Howdy,
Assuming you've installed the FreeBSD package, or built it from the ports
tree:

% cat /usr/local/etc/rc.d/pgsql.sh
#!/bin/sh
[ -d /usr/local/pgsql/lib ] && /sbin/ldconfig -m /usr/local/pgsql/lib

[ -x /usr/local/pgsql/bin/postmaster ] && {
su -l pgsql -c 'exec /usr/local/pgsql/bin/postmaster -i -S -o -F'

/usr/local/pgsql/errlog 2>&1

echo -n ' pgsql'
}

I haven't bothered with a shutdown script.

Regards,
Chris Knight
Systems Administrator
AIMS Independent Computer Professionals
Tel: +61 3 6334 6664 Fax: +61 3 6331 7032 Mob: +61 419 528 795
Web: http://www.aims.com.au