Redshift convert dates to unix timestamps

Question

I have a column of dates in a Redshift table. I would like the output to be in the form of unix timestamps. Essentially, I want the opposite of this question: How to convert epoch to datetime redshift?

Is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

You can just use EPOCH with DATE_PART.

select date_part(epoch, date_column)
from tbl  

From the documentation

The Amazon Redshift implementation of EPOCH is relative to 1970-01-01 00:00:00.000000 independent of the time zone where the server resides. You might need to offset the results by the difference in hours depending on the time zone where the server is located.

Answer 2

Date_part is dead. Use extract() now --

SELECT extract(epoch from CURRENT_DATE)