Timestamp type

A timestamp type can be entered as an integer for CQL input, or as a string literal in ISO 8601 formats.

Values for the timestamp type are encoded as 64-bit signed integers representing a number of milliseconds since the standard base time known as the epoch: January 1 1970 at 00:00:00 GMT.

Note: Be sure to synchronize the clocks on all nodes, using NTP (Network Time Protocol) or other methods. This is required because the databases overwrites a column only if there is another version whose timestamp is more recent, which can happen when machines in are different locations.

A timestamp type can be entered as an integer for CQL input, or as a string literal in any of the following ISO 8601 formats:

yyyy-mm-dd HH:mm
yyyy-mm-dd HH:mm:ss
yyyy-mm-dd HH:mmZ
yyyy-mm-dd HH:mm:ssZ
yyyy-mm-dd'T'HH:mm
yyyy-mm-dd'T'HH:mmZ
yyyy-mm-dd'T'HH:mm:ss
yyyy-mm-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ
yyyy-mm-dd
yyyy-mm-ddZ

where Z is the RFC-822 4-digit time zone, expressing the time zone's difference from UTC. For example, for the date and time of Feb 3, 2011, at 04:05:00 AM, GMT:

2011-02-03 04:05+0000
2011-02-03 04:05:00+0000
2011-02-03T04:05+0000
2011-02-03T04:05:00+0000

If no time zone is specified, the time zone of the Apache Cassandra™ coordinator node handing the write request is used. For accuracy, DataStax recommends specifying the time zone rather than relying on the time zone configured on the Cassandra nodes.

If you only want to capture date values, omit the time of day. For example:

2011-02-03
2011-02-03+0000

In this case, the time of day defaults to 00:00:00 in the specified or default time zone.

Timestamp output appears in the following format by default:

yyyy-mm-dd HH:mm:ssZ

You can change the format by setting the time_format property in the [ui] section of the cqlshrc file.