How to Get the Current Date and Time (No Time Zone) in PostgreSQL

Problem

You’d like to get the current date and time in a PostgreSQL database. You don’t need the time zone offset.

Solution

We’ll use the function LOCALTIMESTAMP to get the current date and time without any time zone information:

SELECT LOCALTIMESTAMP;

Here’s the result of the query:

2023-09-24 20:10:58.977914

Discussion

The PostgreSQL function LOCALTIMESTAMP returns the current date and time (of the machine running that instance of PostgreSQL) as a timestamp value. It uses the YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss.nnnnnnn format, where:

• YYYY is a 4-digit year.
• MM is a 2-digit month.
• DD is a 2-digit day.
• hh is a 2-digit hour.
• mm is a 2-digit minute.
• ss is a 2-digit second.
• nnnnnn are fractional seconds (from zero to 6-digit precision).

This function returns the time at which the current transaction started. The difference between LOCALTIMESTAMP and CURRENT_TIMESTAMP is that the LOCALTIMESTAMP doesn’t include the time zone offset.