#SQL CONVERT STRING TO DATETIME HOW TO#

#SQL CONVERT STRING TO DATETIME HOW TO#

Here’s How to Convert a String to a Date/Time using CAST(). You might also want to check out the CAST() function, which is an ANSI SQL standard way of converting between data types. It will work in some cases where CONVERT() doesn’t. If you get an error while trying to convert a string to a date, try the PARSE() function instead. If you omit the date while converting to the datetime or smalldatetime data types, it will return as the date: SELECT CONVERT(datetime, '2pm') AS Result So in this case you’d need to convert to datetime or smalldatetime. Here’s another example where we do actually specify a time: SELECT CONVERT(time, '2pm') AS Result īut if we add the date, we get an error (unlike an earlier example when we converted to datetime): SELECT CONVERT(time, '2pm ') AS Result In that case, we specified a date but not a time, so it came back as 00:00:00. In this example we convert to the time data type: SELECT CONVERT(time, '') AS Result Convert () function is used to convert a value of any type to another datatype. The CONVERT () function in the SQL server is used to convert a value of one type to another type. Using CONVERT () function: Convert means to change the form or value of something. In this example we convert to the smalldatetime data type: SELECT CONVERT(smalldatetime, '') AS Result We can convert the Date into Datetime in two ways. Result: +-+Įxample 5 – Convert to smalldatetime Data Type In this example we convert to the datetimeoffset data type: SELECT CONVERT(datetimeoffset, '') AS Result In this example we convert to the datetime2 data type: SELECT CONVERT(datetime2, '') AS Result Įxample 4 – Convert to datetimeoffset Data Type You can also specify the time: SELECT CONVERT(datetime, '2pm ') AS Result Įxample 3 – Convert to datetime2 Data Type In this example we convert to the datetime data type: SELECT CONVERT(datetime, '') AS Result Result: Conversion failed when converting date and/or time from character string.Įxample 2 – Convert to datetime Data Type Of course, the string needs to be in a style that’s able to be converted to the specified data type, otherwise you’ll get an error: SELECT CONVERT(date, 'Homer') AS Result In this example, we convert the string into a date data type (we specify this by using date as the first argument). For a style value of NULL, NULL is returned. style An integer expression that specifies how the CONVERT() function will translate expression. length An optional integer that specifies the length of the target data type. This includes xml, bigint, and sql_variant. These arguments are defined as follows: expression Any valid expression. The syntax goes like this: CONVERT ( data_type, expression ) This article contains examples to demonstrate its usage.

Therefore, if you need to convert a string to a date/time format, this function can help. In SQL Server, you can use the CONVERT() function to convert an expression of one data type to another.

Sql convert string to datetime