Parsing and Formatting

Concepts covered: sqlDateFormat

Different systems use different date formats. APIs might send "2024-01-15T10:30:00Z" while CSV files contain "01/15/2024". SQL provides functions to parse strings into timestamps and format timestamps into strings. Parsing Strings to Dates Format codes: yyyy=year, MM=month, dd=day, HH=hour, mm=minute, ss=second. Formatting Dates to Strings ISO 8601 Format ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD) is the international standard. Use it for APIs and file interchange to avoid ambiguity. Common Format Patterns The MMM abbreviation for month names may be locale-dependent. For cross-regional systems, use numeric formats like yyyy-MM-dd to avoid language differences in output.

About This Interactive Section

This section is part of the Dates: Advanced lesson on DataDriven, a free data engineering interview prep platform. Each section includes explanations, worked examples, and hands-on code challenges that execute in real time. SQL queries run against a live PostgreSQL database. Python runs in a sandboxed Docker container. Data modeling problems validate against interactive schema canvases. All content is framed around what data engineering interviewers actually test at companies like Meta, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Stripe, and Databricks.

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