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Posted by thomascawthorn
thomascawthorn
22,986 Points

MySQL bug: timestamps older than 45 years (from today) aren't being committed

I'm in laravel 4.2 using Carbon

Is this even a bug or my lack of understanding of MySQL? On one table I'm working with three timestamp columns. All the way up to persistence (being saved) in the database, the object is populated with the desired timestamp. I've checked it right up until the save command is called and it's all fine!

But when it gets entered into the database, the timestamps show as 000-00-00 00:00:00. I mean.. what! It only happens to timestamps 45 years in the past from today. All the logic for dates within the past 45 years works fine.

Is this on purpose? Or a big? Or a setting? AGH!

Geoff Parsons
Geoff Parsons
11,679 Points

How are you inserting the timestamps into the database? Looks to me like you ran into a Unix time issue.

2 Answers

Milo Winningham
seal-mask
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Milo Winningham
Web Development Techdegree Student 3,317 Points
Milo Winningham
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Milo Winningham
Web Development Techdegree Student 3,317 Points

The MySQL TIMESTAMP type is a Unix timestamp (defined as the time since January 1, 1970). To store a date before that, you'll have to use the DATETIME type instead. More information here: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/datetime.html

thomascawthorn
thomascawthorn
22,986 Points
thomascawthorn
thomascawthorn
22,986 Points

It was 4am after posting this that It hit me - what am I using? A Timestamp. What year was roughly 45 years ago? 1970. Aggghhhhhh.

I'm submitting to a format of Y-m-d H:i:s (I think that's correct), so I'm hoping all I need to do is write a migration to change the field type.

Thanks guys!