Using pgAdmin4 I imported text files to a table with 13 columns. The table columns are all of type text. The first column, named Date, contains text of dates (YYYY-MM-DD). There are multiple rows per date. I want to query and show the unique dates. I have used the following query from pgAdmin:
SELECT DISTINCT 'Date' FROM "myTable"
The result from this query is just 1 result: Date. It does not include any data from a given cell.
I would expect the result to show:
2020-01-16 2020-01-15 2020-01-14
To try a simpler query. I queried:
SELECT 'Date' FROM "myTable"
The query returns every row, but instead of the data (YYYY-MM-DD), each cell just says Date.
In following this PostgreSQL Tutorial I could not replicate the results.
I have noticed that with pgAdmin queries I wrap my columns and tables in single, or double quotes, whereas quotations are not included in many tutorials.
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Answer
Remove the single quotes around 'Date'
, otherwise it’s a string litteral, not a column name.
SELECT DISTINCT Date FROM myTable
If you really need to quote the identifier, for example if it matches a reserved word, if it contains special characters or if the column was declared as case-sensitive, then Postgres wants double quotes:
SELECT DISTINCT "Date" FROM "myTable"