Syntax for adding a timestamp column in Postgres

Question

After research on here I wanted to use "timestamp with time zone" but cannot figure out the proper syntax based on the postgres docs.

ALTER TABLE microwaves ADD COLUMN scanned_in DATA_TYPE timestamp with time zone;

ALTER TABLE microwaves ADD COLUMN scanned_in TYPE timestamp with time zone;

Both throw errors.

Any help appreciated, thanks.

Answer 1

You just had the syntax wrong. You don't need the [DATA] TYPE part here (that's only needed when you want to change the type) :

CREATE TABLE barf
        ( id serial PRIMARY KEY);

ALTER TABLE barf ADD COLUMN scanned_in timestamp with time zone;

BTW (just a hint): most of the ALTER syntax just mimics the syntax for CREATE TABLE (...): the sub-syntax is mostly the same.