How do I match an entire day to a datetime field?

Question

I have a table for matches. The table has a column named matchdate, which is a datetime field.

If I have 3 matches on 2011-12-01:

Answer 1

Just use the SQL BETWEEN function like so:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE date BETWEEN '2011-12-01' AND '2011-12-02'

You may need to include times in the date literals, but this should include the lover limit and exclude the upper.

From rails I believe you can do:

.where(:between => '2011-12-01'..'2011-12-02')

Answer 2

not sure if i am missing something obvious here, but i think you can just

select * from table where date_trunc('day', ts) = '2011-12-01';

Answer 3

Cast your timestamp value to date if you want simple syntax. Like this:

SELECT *
FROM   tbl
WHERE  timestamp_col::date = '2011-12-01';  -- date literal

However, with big tables this will be faster:

SELECT *
FROM   tbl
WHERE  timestamp_col >= '2011-12-01 0:0'    -- timestamp literal
AND    timestamp_col <  '2011-12-02 0:0';

Reason: the second query does not have to transform every single value in the table and can utilize a simple index on the timestamp column. The expression is sargable.

Note excluded the upper bound (< instead of <=) for a correct selection.
You can make up for that by creating an index on an expression like this:

CREATE INDEX tbl_ts_date_idx ON tbl (cast(timestamp_col AS date));

Then the first version of the query will be as fast as it gets.