BigQuery: "Invalid function name"

Question

In BigQuery, I ran this query

SELECT SEC_TO_TIMESTAMP(start_time), resource
FROM [logs.requestlogs_20140305]

and received the error

Error: Invalid function name: SEC_TO_TIMESTAMP

SEC_TO_TIMESTAMP is listed in the date functions reference, so why does this error come up?

Sophie Alpert · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-11 23:05:07Z

3

Turns out my start_time column was of type float, not an integer which SEC_TO_TIMESTAMP expects. Changing the query to

SELECT SEC_TO_TIMESTAMP(INTEGER(start_time)), resource
FROM [logs.requestlogs_20140305]

fixed the problem.

answered Mar 6, 2014 at 21:27

Sophie Alpert

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1 Comment

Thanks for reporting this. In fact, it's a very confusing error message.