MySQL: how to get an actual TimeStamp? literally the amount of seconds since 1970-01-01 UTC

A MySQL timestamp field is written a开发者_开发知识库nd read as 'yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss', how can I get the actual amount of seconds since 1970-01-01 UTC?

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Use UNIX_TIMESTAMP.

If called with no argument, returns a Unix timestamp (seconds since '1970-01-01 00:00:00' UTC) as an unsigned integer. If UNIX_TIMESTAMP() is called with a date argument, it returns the value of the argument as seconds since '1970-01-01 00:00:00' UTC. date may be a DATE string, a DATETIME string, a TIMESTAMP, or a number in the format YYMMDD or YYYYMMDD.

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SELECT UNIX_TIMESTAMP('2007-11-30 10:30:19');

or

SELECT UNIX_TIMESTAMP(fieldGoesHere) FROM blah WHERE foo = 1;