Data Types

Supported types

CockroachDB supports the following data types.

Type	Description	Example
ARRAY	A 1-dimensional, 1-indexed, homogeneous array of any non-array data type.	{"sky","road","car"}
BIT	A string of binary digits (bits).	B'10010101'
BOOL	A Boolean value.	true
BYTES	A string of binary characters.	b'\141\061\142\062\143\063'
COLLATE	The COLLATE feature lets you sort STRING values according to language- and country-specific rules, known as collations.	'a1b2c3' COLLATE en
DATE	A date.	DATE '2016-01-25'
ENUM	A user-defined data type comprised of a set of static values.	ENUM ('club, 'diamond', 'heart', 'spade')
DECIMAL	An exact, fixed-point number.	1.2345
FLOAT	A 64-bit, inexact, floating-point number.	1.2345
INET	An IPv4 or IPv6 address.	192.168.0.1
INT	A signed integer, up to 64 bits.	12345
INTERVAL	A span of time.	INTERVAL '2h30m30s'
NULL	The undefined value.	NULL
JSONB	JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) data.	'{"first_name": "Lola", "last_name": "Dog", "location": "NYC", "online" : true, "friends" : 547}'
OID	An unsigned 32-bit integer.	4294967295
SERIAL	A pseudo-type that combines an integer type with a DEFAULT expression.	148591304110702593
STRING	A string of Unicode characters.	'a1b2c3'
TIME TIMETZ	TIME stores a time of day in UTC. TIMETZ converts TIME values with a specified time zone offset from UTC.	TIME '01:23:45.123456' TIMETZ '01:23:45.123456-5:00'
TIMESTAMP TIMESTAMPTZ	TIMESTAMP stores a date and time pairing in UTC. TIMESTAMPTZ converts TIMESTAMP values with a specified time zone offset from UTC.	TIMESTAMP '2016-01-25 10:10:10' TIMESTAMPTZ '2016-01-25 10:10:10-05:00'
TSQUERY	A list of lexemes and operators used in full-text search.	'list' & 'lexem' & 'oper' & 'use' & 'full' & 'text' & 'search'
TSVECTOR	A list of lexemes with optional integer positions and weights used in full-text search.	'full':13 'integ':7 'lexem':4 'list':2 'option':6 'posit':8 'search':15 'text':14 'use':11 'weight':10
UUID	A 128-bit hexadecimal value.	7f9c24e8-3b12-4fef-91e0-56a2d5a246ec
VECTOR	A fixed-length array of floating-point numbers.	[1.0, 0.0, 0.0]

Data type conversions and casts

CockroachDB supports explicit type conversions using the following methods:

• <type> 'string literal', to convert from the literal representation of a value to a value of that type. For example: DATE '2008-12-21', INT '123', or BOOL 'true'.

• <value>::<data type>, or its equivalent longer form CAST(<value> AS <data type>), which converts an arbitrary expression of one built-in type to another (this is also known as type coercion or "casting"). For example: NOW()::DECIMAL, VARIANCE(a+2)::INT.

  Tip:

  To create constant values, consider using a type annotation instead of a cast, as it provides more predictable results.

• Other built-in conversion functions when the type is not a SQL type, for example from_ip(), to_ip() to convert IP addresses between STRING and BYTES values.

CockroachDB also supports implicit casting from string literals to arrays of all data types except the following:

• BYTES
• ENUM
• JSONB
• SERIAL
• Box2D (spatial type)
• GEOGRAPHY (spatial type)
• GEOMETRY (spatial type)

For an example, see Implicit casting to ARRAYs.

You can find each data type's supported conversion and casting on its respective page in its section Supported casting & conversion.

See also

• CREATE TYPE
• ALTER TYPE
• DROP TYPE
• SHOW TYPES