I've got a table setup which has populated data. In column "date", I have dates in the following format:
yyyymmdd i.e. 20131110
I have created a new field and called it newdate with the text format.
Then, I open up the SQL window and put the following in
UPDATE wl_daily
SET
newdate = UNIX_TIMESTAMP(date)
For some reason, it is running correctly, however it only outputs NULL to all the rows. Also, the column name is blank for some reason
Any suggestions?
That's because your field in a string and you're trying to add timestamp to it which is not a string. You need to use a valid datetime field like timestamp for this to work.
Advice: don't store dates and times as strings. Store them in their native format. It makes working with dates and times much easier.
While John Cronde's answer is correct - it doesnt help your situtation
UNIX_TIMESTAMP(STR_TO_DATE(`date`, '%Y%m%d'))
will do the conversion for example
SELECT UNIX_TIMESTAMP(STR_TO_DATE('20131111', '%Y%m%d'))
returns
unix_timestamp(STR_TO_DATE('20131111', '%Y%m%d'))
---------------------------------------------------
1384128000
You should only use this to convert your columns to the date specific columns. Converting each time you need a number will add load and slow down the query if used in production
date should be the column containing the text ? quote it with backticks because date is a reserved word