Hive UDF - Convert Date to Unix Timestamp Example

Hive UDF - Convert Date to Unix Timestamp

Background

This little UDF will convert a date, in any specified format, into a unix timestamp.  To specify the date just edit the string in the SimpleDateFormat to your liking. So here is how we did it.  

I have also left in the imports and you will need to find the jar files that contain these classes.  

Implementation

package allan.DtoT;
import java.text.ParseException;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;

import org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.exec.UDF;

public class DateToTime extends UDF{
 public long evaluate(final String d){
  try{
   SimpleDateFormat sf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'Z'");
   return sf.parse(d.trim()).getTime();
  } catch (ParseException pe) {return -1;}
  
 }
}