I'm trying to convert the string in REC_TIME
column to a timestamp format in hive.
Ex: Sun Jul 31 09:28:20 UTC 2016 => 2016-07-31 09:28:20
SELECT xxx, UNIX_TIMESTAMP(REC_TIME, "E M dd HH:mm:ss z yyyy") FROM wlogs LIMIT 10;
When I execute the above SQL it returns a NULL value.
Try this :
select from_unixtime(unix_timestamp("Sun Jul 31 09:28:20 UTC 2016","EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy"));
This works fine if your hive cluster has UTC timezone. Say suppose your server is in CST then you need to do as below to get to UTC;
select to_utc_timestamp(from_unixtime(unix_timestamp("Sun Jul 31 09:28:20 UTC 2016","EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy")),'CST');
Hope this helps.
EDIT
Hive date functions use the JAVA simple date formater for the patterns . Refer this for the patterns.
Be aware my computers runs on PDT
[cloudera@quickstart ~]$ date +%Z
PDT
So the UTC time is converted to 2:28:20 PDT. Anyway this is not the point.
You are using HH for hours, use hh and you need at least 3 M for the month.
0: jdbc:hive2://quickstart:10000/default> select from_unixtime(unix_timestamp("Sun Jul 31 09:28:20 UTC 2016", 'E MMM dd hh:mm:ss z yyyy')) as date;
+----------------------+--+
| date |
+----------------------+--+
| 2016-07-31 02:28:20 |
+----------------------+--+