Floor a date in SQL server

In SQL Server, how do I "floor" a DATETIME to the second/minute/hour/day/year?

Let's say that I have a date of 2008-09-17 12:56:53.430, then the output of flooring should be:

• Year: 2008-01-01 00:00:00.000
• Month: 2008-09-01 00:00:00.000
• Day: 2008-09-17 00:00:00.000
• Hour: 2008-09-17 12:00:00.000
• Minute: 2008-09-17 12:56:00.000
• Second: 2008-09-17 12:56:53.000

The key is to use DATEADD and DATEDIFF along with the appropriate SQL timespan enumeration.

declare @datetime datetime;
set @datetime = getdate();
select @datetime;
select dateadd(year,datediff(year,0,@datetime),0);
select dateadd(month,datediff(month,0,@datetime),0);
select dateadd(day,datediff(day,0,@datetime),0);
select dateadd(hour,datediff(hour,0,@datetime),0);
select dateadd(minute,datediff(minute,0,@datetime),0);
select dateadd(second,datediff(second,'2000-01-01',@datetime),'2000-01-01');
select dateadd(week,datediff(week,0,@datetime),-1); --Beginning of week is Sunday
select dateadd(week,datediff(week,0,@datetime),0); --Beginning of week is Monday

Note that when you are flooring by the second, you will often get an arithmetic overflow if you use 0. So pick a known value that is guaranteed to be lower than the datetime you are attempting to floor.

In SQL Server here's a little trick to do that:

SELECT CAST(FLOOR(CAST(CURRENT_TIMESTAMP AS float)) AS DATETIME)

You cast the DateTime into a float, which represents the Date as the integer portion and the Time as the fraction of a day that's passed. Chop off that decimal portion, then cast that back to a DateTime, and you've got midnight at the beginning of that day.

This is probably more efficient than all the DATEADD and DATEDIFF stuff. It's certainly way easier to type.

Expanding upon the Convert/Cast solution, in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 you can do the following:

cast(cast(getdate() as date) as datetime)

Just replace getdate() with any column which is a datetime.

There are no strings involved in this conversion.

This is ok for ad-hoc queries or updates, but for key joins or heavily used processing it may be better to handle the conversion within the processing or redefine the tables to have appropriate keys and data.

In 2005, you can use the messier floor: cast(floor(cast(getdate() as float)) as datetime)

I don't think that uses string conversion either, but I can't speak to comparing actual efficiency versus armchair estimates.

I've used @Portman's answer many times over the years as a reference when flooring dates and have moved its working into a function which you may find useful.

I make no claims to its performance and merely provide it as a tool for the user.

I ask that, if you do decide to upvote this answer, please also upvote @Portman's answer, as my code is a derivative of his.

IF OBJECT_ID('fn_FloorDate') IS NOT NULL DROP FUNCTION fn_FloorDate
SET ANSI_NULLS OFF
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[fn_FloorDate] (
  @Date DATETIME = NULL,
  @DatePart VARCHAR(6) = 'day'
)
RETURNS DATETIME
AS
BEGIN
  IF (@Date IS NULL)
    SET @Date = GETDATE();

  RETURN
  CASE
    WHEN LOWER(@DatePart) = 'year' THEN DATEADD(YEAR, DATEDIFF(YEAR, 0, @Date), 0)
    WHEN LOWER(@DatePart) = 'month' THEN DATEADD(MONTH, DATEDIFF(MONTH, 0, @Date), 0)
    WHEN LOWER(@DatePart) = 'day' THEN DATEADD(DAY, DATEDIFF(DAY, 0, @Date), 0)
    WHEN LOWER(@DatePart) = 'hour' THEN DATEADD(HOUR, DATEDIFF(HOUR, 0, @Date), 0)
    WHEN LOWER(@DatePart) = 'minute' THEN DATEADD(MINUTE, DATEDIFF(MINUTE, 0, @Date), 0)
    WHEN LOWER(@DatePart) = 'second' THEN DATEADD(SECOND, DATEDIFF(SECOND, '2000-01-01', @Date), '2000-01-01')
    ELSE DATEADD(DAY, DATEDIFF(DAY, 0, @Date), 0)
  END;
END

Usage:

DECLARE @date DATETIME;
SET @date = '2008-09-17 12:56:53.430';

SELECT
  @date AS [Now],--2008-09-17 12:56:53.430
  dbo.fn_FloorDate(@date, 'year') AS [Year],--2008-01-01 00:00:00.000
  dbo.fn_FloorDate(default, default) AS [NoParams],--2013-11-05 00:00:00.000
  dbo.fn_FloorDate(@date, default) AS [ShouldBeDay],--2008-09-17 00:00:00.000
  dbo.fn_FloorDate(@date, 'month') AS [Month],--2008-09-01 00:00:00.000
  dbo.fn_FloorDate(@date, 'day') AS [Day],--2008-09-17 00:00:00.000
  dbo.fn_FloorDate(@date, 'hour') AS [Hour],--2008-09-17 12:00:00.000
  dbo.fn_FloorDate(@date, 'minute') AS [Minute],--2008-09-17 12:56:00.000
  dbo.fn_FloorDate(@date, 'second') AS [Second];--2008-09-17 12:56:53.000

The CONVERT() function can do this as well, depending on what style you use.

Too bad it's not Oracle, or else you could use trunc() or to_char().

But I had similar issues with SQL Server and used the CONVERT() and DateDiff() methods, as referenced here

There are several ways to skin this cat =)

select convert(datetime,convert(varchar,CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,101))

DateAdd along with DateDiff can help to do many different tasks. For example, you can find last day of any month as well can find last day of previous or next month.

----Last Day of Previous Month
SELECT DATEADD(s,-1,DATEADD(mm, DATEDIFF(m,0,GETDATE()),0))
LastDay_PreviousMonth
----Last Day of Current Month
SELECT DATEADD(s,-1,DATEADD(mm, DATEDIFF(m,0,GETDATE())+1,0))
LastDay_CurrentMonth
----Last Day of Next Month
SELECT DATEADD(s,-1,DATEADD(mm, DATEDIFF(m,0,GETDATE())+2,0))
LastDay_NextMonth

Source

Since PostgreSQL is also a "SQL Server", I'll mention

date_trunc()

Which does exactly what you're asking gracefully.

For example:

select date_trunc('hour',current_timestamp);
date_trunc

2009-02-18 07:00:00-08 (1 row)