Aggregate time-series data with time_bucket

The time_bucket function helps you group your data, so you can perform aggregate calculations over arbitrary time intervals. It is usually used in combination with GROUP BY for this purpose.

This section shows examples of time_bucket use. To learn how time buckets work, see the about time buckets section.

Group data into time buckets and calculate a summary value for a column. For example, calculate the average daily temperature in a table named weather_conditions. The table has a time column named time and a temperature column:

SELECT time_bucket('1 day', time) AS bucket,
  avg(temperature) AS avg_temp
FROM weather_conditions
GROUP BY bucket
ORDER BY bucket ASC;

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The time_bucket function returns the start time of the bucket. In this example, the first bucket starts at midnight on November 15, 2016, and aggregates all the data from that day:

bucket                 |      avg_temp
-----------------------+---------------------
2016-11-15 00:00:00+00 | 68.3704391666665821
2016-11-16 00:00:00+00 | 67.0816684374999347

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By default, the time_bucket column shows the start time of the bucket. If you prefer to show the end time, you can shift the displayed time using a mathematical operation on time.

For example, you can calculate the minimum and maximum CPU usage for 5-minute intervals, and show the end of time of the interval. The example table is named metrics. It has a time column named time and a CPU usage column named cpu:

SELECT time_bucket('5 min', time) + '5 min' AS bucket,
  min(cpu),
  max(cpu)
FROM metrics
GROUP BY bucket
ORDER BY bucket DESC;

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The addition of + '5 min' changes the displayed timestamp to the end of the bucket. It doesn't change the range of times spanned by the bucket.

To change the time range spanned by the buckets, use the offset parameter, which takes an INTERVAL argument. A positive offset shifts the start and end time of the buckets later. A negative offset shifts the start and end time of the buckets earlier.

For example, you can calculate the average CPU usage for 5-hour intervals, and shift the start and end times of all buckets 1 hour later:

SELECT time_bucket('5 hours', time, '1 hour'::INTERVAL) AS bucket,
  avg(cpu)
FROM metrics
GROUP BY bucket
ORDER BY bucket DESC;

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Time buckets are usually used together with GROUP BY to aggregate data. But you can also run time_bucket on a single time value. This is useful for testing and learning, because you can see what bucket a value falls into.

For example, to see the 1-week time bucket into which January 5, 2021 would fall, run:

SELECT time_bucket(INTERVAL '1 week', TIMESTAMP '2021-01-05');

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The function returns 2021-01-04 00:00:00. The start time of the time bucket is the Monday of that week, at midnight.