Change a MySQL Column datatype from text to timestamp?

To change a MySQL column datatype from text to timestamp, you need to use ALTER command.

The syntax is as follows

ALTER TABLE yourTableName MODIFY COLUMN yourColumnName TIMESTAMP;

To understand the above syntax, let us create a table.

The query to create a table is as follows

mysql> create table textTotimestampdemo
   - > (
   - > Id int NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
   - > Source text
   - > );
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.44 sec)

Here is the description of table using DESC command.

The syntax is as follows

DESC yourTableName;

The query is as follows

mysql> desc textTotimestampdemo;

The following is the output

+--------+---------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field  | Type    | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+--------+---------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Id     | int(11) | NO   | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment |
| Source | text    | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
+--------+---------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
2 rows in set (0.04 sec)

Now change the column text to timestamp with the help of the following query

mysql> alter table textTotimestampdemo modify column Source TIMESTAMP;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (1.25 sec)
Records: 0 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0

Now check the description of the table once again.

The query is as follows

mysql> desc textTotimestampdemo;

The following is the output

+--------+-----------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field  | Type      | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+--------+-----------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Id     | int(11)   | NO   | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment |
| Source | timestamp | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
+--------+-----------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Look at the column Source above, the datatype has been changed from text to timestamp.