Question

Basically I’d like to get this command to work:

$sql = "SELECT (EntryDate + TotalTime) as DataLine FROM TimeSheet WHERE EmployeeID='AA01'";

EntryDate is in the database as a text, but TotalTime is a Number. I need to cast TotalTime as a text, because I’ve noticed if I combine two differing types of values, it just blanks out the output.

I know I’m supposed to use CAST(TotalTime as XXX) but I’m not sure what I can legally cast it to (char/nchar doesn’t seem to work, neither does string nor text). I always get an error of the form…

Syntax error (missing operator) in query expression '(EntryDate + CAST(TotalTime as string) as DataLine FROM TimeSheet WHERE EmployeeID='AA01''

Could I get some help? Thank you!

EDIT I would like to note this isn’t intended to add together the values of EntryDate and TotalTime together to produce a single value. I simply want it to give me the EntryDate value as well as the TotalTime value combined into a single line that would read something like:

“10/31/12 9.25”

EDIT AGAIN I’m sorry for not specifying before, I’m using MSSQL

Answer 1

Try this instead:

SELECT 
  CAST(EntryDate AS VARCHAR(25)) + CAST(TotalTime AS VARCHAR(10)) as DataLine 
FROM TimeSheet 
WHERE EmployeeID = 'AA01';

However, if entrydate is a date and the int totaltime is a time, it may be better to consider converting them as a datetime object by adding them as a date part to the time part depending on the RDBMS you are using. And if possible use a DATETIME datatype to represent both date and time parts instead of two parts. Like so:

SELECT DATEADD(hh, totaltime, entrydate)
FROM TimeSheet
WHERE EmployeeID = 'AA01';

SQL Fiddle Demo