Re: Joining time fields?

On Tue, 2012-07-24 at 15:57 +0100, James David Smith wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I wonder if someone could help me out please. I've got two tables,
> both with a TIMESTAMP field. I'd like to do a left join with them. I'd
> like to take the date_time from table A, and join it with the nearest
> date_time from table B. Whether the time from B is before or after the
> time in A doesn't matter, I just want the closest time. I started with
> the below query, but it only gets me the column from table B if the
> time stamp exactly matches which is clearly correct. I'm sure that
> this should be quite easy but I can't figure it out...!
>

This is actually a challenging query. Here's what I came up with:

  SELECT
    a.date_time,
    (SELECT b.date_time
     FROM table2 b
     ORDER BY abs(extract(epoch from b.date_time - a.date_time))
     LIMIT 1)
    AS date_time
  FROM table1 a;

You might also look into window functions:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/tutorial-window.html

Or even LATERAL, which was just committed and only available if you
check out the source:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/sql-select.html

There are always a few ways to approach problems like this. I used a
subselect in the target list (the part between SELECT and FROM), which
satisfied your particular question; but similar queries might call for a
different approach.

Regards,
    Jeff Davis