PostgreSQL date range query

Question

I have a PSQL database that has fields for "start_time" and "end_time" in a table.

These get imported from a json file as string to a text field in the database. The string has the following format: yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss I want to do a query to give all id's of a table in the database that are within a given date range.

To do this I can do one of two things. Either I can query for a list of start and end times given a date range, and with the return from that query do a separate query for the actual data I am looking to get with WHERE start_time = ANY ('{list of dates go here}')

The other option is to figure out how to change the format of the row to something that is comparable. Something like WHERE start_time > beginning of date range AND end_time > end of date range if the fields are not text fields.

The date range is going to come from a date time picker from a website.

This might be a duplicate post but after hours of searching for a solution to either of those nothing has come up. So anything in the right direction is helpful.

Thanks

Answer 1

PostgreSQL should go easy on you in this case. Simply cast the string to timestamp and to the comparison.

This should work out of the box:

WHERE start_time::timestamp > '2016-01-01' AND end_time::timestamp < '2016-12-31'