postgresql - Turn postgres date representation into ISO 8601 string

Question

I'm trying to format a Postgres date representation into a ISO 8601 string. I'm assuming that there is a Postgres function that can do it, but I found the documentation short on examples.

My query is

SELECT
  now()::timestamp

which returns

[{{2016, 8, 9}, {3, 56, 55, 754181}}]

I'm trying to get the date into a format that looks more like 2016-8-9T03:56:55+00:00.

What changes do I need to make to my query to make that happen? Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

I think I found a way to do the formatting, but it's not ideal because I'm writing the formatting myself.

Here is a potential solution:

SELECT to_char (now()::timestamp at time zone 'UTC', 'YYYY-MM-DD"T"HH24:MI:SS"Z"')