Convert A String To A Timestamp In PostgreSQL

If you have a string that represents a point in time, there are a couple ways that you can convert it to a PostgreSQL timestamptz value.

If the string is in ISO 8601 format, then it can be simply cast to timestamptz.

> select '2018-10-24'::timestamptz;
      timestamptz
------------------------
 2018-10-24 00:00:00-05

A more general purpose approach is to use the to_timestamp function.

> select to_timestamp('2018-10-24', 'YYYY-MM-DD');
      to_timestamp
------------------------
 2018-10-24 00:00:00-05

The first argument is our string-to-be-converted in whatever format. The second argument is another string describing in what format that string is.

Note: Both of these approaches produce a timestamptz value.