11.3.1. The DATETIME, DATE, and TIMESTAMP Types
The DATETIME, DATE, and
TIMESTAMP types are related. This section
describes their characteristics, how they are similar, and how
they differ.
The DATETIME type is used when you need
values that contain both date and time information. MySQL
retrieves and displays DATETIME values in
'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS' format. The supported
range is '1000-01-01 00:00:00' to
'9999-12-31 23:59:59'.
(“Supported” means that although earlier values
might work, there is no guarantee)
The DATE type is used when you need only a
date value, without a time part. MySQL retrieves and displays
DATE values in
'YYYY-MM-DD' format. The supported range is
'1000-01-01' to
'9999-12-31'.
The TIMESTAMP data type has varying
properties, depending on the MySQL version and the SQL mode the
server is running in. These properties are described later in
this section.
You can specify DATETIME,
DATE, and TIMESTAMP values
using any of a common set of formats:
As a string in either 'YYYY-MM-DD
HH:MM:SS' or 'YY-MM-DD
HH:MM:SS' format. A “relaxed” syntax
is allowed: Any punctuation character may be used as the
delimiter between date parts or time parts. For example,
'98-12-31 11:30:45', '98.12.31
11+30+45', '98/12/31 11*30*45',
and '98@12@31 11^30^45' are equivalent.
As a string in either 'YYYY-MM-DD' or
'YY-MM-DD' format. A
“relaxed” syntax is allowed here, too. For
example, '98-12-31',
'98.12.31',
'98/12/31', and
'98@12@31' are equivalent.
As a string with no delimiters in either
'YYYYMMDDHHMMSS' or
'YYMMDDHHMMSS' format, provided that the
string makes sense as a date. For example,
'19970523091528' and
'970523091528' are interpreted as
'1997-05-23 09:15:28', but
'971122129015' is illegal (it has a
nonsensical minute part) and becomes '0000-00-00
00:00:00'.
As a string with no delimiters in either
'YYYYMMDD' or 'YYMMDD'
format, provided that the string makes sense as a date. For
example, '19970523' and
'970523' are interpreted as
'1997-05-23', but
'971332' is illegal (it has nonsensical
month and day parts) and becomes
'0000-00-00'.
As a number in either YYYYMMDDHHMMSS or
YYMMDDHHMMSS format, provided that the
number makes sense as a date. For example,
19830905132800 and
830905132800 are interpreted as
'1983-09-05 13:28:00'.
As a number in either YYYYMMDD or
YYMMDD format, provided that the number
makes sense as a date. For example,
19830905 and 830905
are interpreted as '1983-09-05'.
As the result of a function that returns a value that is
acceptable in a DATETIME,
DATE, or TIMESTAMP
context, such as NOW() or
CURRENT_DATE.
Illegal DATETIME, DATE, or
TIMESTAMP values are converted to the
“zero” value of the appropriate type
('0000-00-00 00:00:00' or
'0000-00-00').
For values specified as strings that include date part
delimiters, it is not necessary to specify two digits for month
or day values that are less than 10.
'1979-6-9' is the same as
'1979-06-09'. Similarly, for values specified
as strings that include time part delimiters, it is not
necessary to specify two digits for hour, minute, or second
values that are less than 10.
'1979-10-30 1:2:3' is the same as
'1979-10-30 01:02:03'.
Values specified as numbers should be 6, 8, 12, or 14 digits
long. If a number is 8 or 14 digits long, it is assumed to be in
YYYYMMDD or YYYYMMDDHHMMSS
format and that the year is given by the first 4 digits. If the
number is 6 or 12 digits long, it is assumed to be in
YYMMDD or YYMMDDHHMMSS
format and that the year is given by the first 2 digits. Numbers
that are not one of these lengths are interpreted as though
padded with leading zeros to the closest length.
Values specified as non-delimited strings are interpreted using
their length as given. If the string is 8 or 14 characters long,
the year is assumed to be given by the first 4 characters.
Otherwise, the year is assumed to be given by the first 2
characters. The string is interpreted from left to right to find
year, month, day, hour, minute, and second values, for as many
parts as are present in the string. This means you should not
use strings that have fewer than 6 characters. For example, if
you specify '9903', thinking that represents
March, 1999, MySQL inserts a “zero” date value into
your table. This occurs because the year and month values are
99 and 03, but the day
part is completely missing, so the value is not a legal date.
However, you can explicitly specify a value of zero to represent
missing month or day parts. For example, you can use
'990300' to insert the value
'1999-03-00'.
You can to some extent assign values of one date type to an
object of a different date type. However, there may be some
alteration of the value or loss of information:
If you assign a DATE value to a
DATETIME or TIMESTAMP
object, the time part of the resulting value is set to
'00:00:00' because the
DATE value contains no time information.
If you assign a DATETIME or
TIMESTAMP value to a
DATE object, the time part of the
resulting value is deleted because the
DATE type stores no time information.
Remember that although DATETIME,
DATE, and TIMESTAMP
values all can be specified using the same set of formats,
the types do not all have the same range of values. For
example, TIMESTAMP values cannot be
earlier than 1970 or later than
2037. This means that a date such as
'1968-01-01', while legal as a
DATETIME or DATE
value, is not valid as a TIMESTAMP value
and is converted to 0.
Be aware of certain pitfalls when specifying date values:
The relaxed format allowed for values specified as strings
can be deceiving. For example, a value such as
'10:11:12' might look like a time value
because of the ‘:’ delimiter,
but if used in a date context is interpreted as the year
'2010-11-12'. The value
'10:45:15' is converted to
'0000-00-00' because
'45' is not a legal month.
The server requires that month and day values be legal, and
not merely in the range 1 to 12 and 1 to 31, respectively.
With strict mode disabled, invalid dates such as
'2004-04-31' are converted to
'0000-00-00' and a warning is generated.
With strict mode enabled, invalid dates generate an error.
To allow such dates, enable
ALLOW_INVALID_DATES. See
Section 5.2.5, “The Server SQL Mode”, for more information.
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Dates containing two-digit year values are ambiguous because
the century is unknown. MySQL interprets two-digit year
values using the following rules:
