> On 26 Dec 2015, at 13:03, Kevin Waterson <kevin.water...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Thanks, as I am new to postgres, I was unaware of this function.

Actually, the article you referenced makes use of generate_series as well (at 
INSERT INTO events), but then for some reason decides to create a 
generate_recurrences function later on. Possibly the choice came from them 
using a domain (RECURRENCE) that did not translate directly (although almost) 
to an interval.

> To go with this, I guess I will need a table with which to store intervals, 
> start and end dates?
> 
> eg
> CREATE table events(
>     id serial primary key,
>     start_timestamp timestamp,
>     end_timestamp timestamp,
>     interval 
> 
> with dateRange as
>   (
>   SELECT min(start_timestamp) as first_date, max(start_timestamp) as last_date
>   FROM events
>   )
> select 
>     generate_series(first_date, last_date, '1 hour'::interval)::timestamp as 
> date_hour
> from dateRange;

But, instead of generate_series you could also use a recursive CTE (which is 
more or less standard SQL - implementations differ slightly between databases):

with recursive dateRange (curr_stamp, max_stamp, step) as (
        select min(start_timestamp), max(start_timestamp), interval '1 week'
          from events
        union all
        select curr_stamp + step, max_stamp, step
          from dateRange
         where curr_stamp + step <= max_stamp
)
select curr_stamp from dateRange;

I suspect generate_series is faster, but since your query already almost looked 
like this I thought I'd offer this alternative approach. It has a little bit 
more flexibility too, as you can add fields and calculations to the CTE quite 
easily.

Alban Hertroys
--
If you can't see the forest for the trees,
cut the trees and you'll find there is no forest.



-- 
Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general

Reply via email to