Date Formats and Conversions - Mailing list pgsql-novice

From David Rickard
Subject Date Formats and Conversions
Date
Msg-id 5.2.1.1.0.20031016104815.00ac5008@mail.gtscompanies.com
Whole thread Raw
Responses Re: Date Formats and Conversions  (Bruno Wolff III <bruno@wolff.to>)
List pgsql-novice
We have a intranet site we're converting to PostgreSQL; there are numerous pages where users have to enter dates (for search ranges, hire dates etc); the dates are assumed to be in MM/DD/YY format in the code (using TO_DATE(<variable>, 'MM/DD/YY')--but users being users, sometimes dates get entered as MM/DD/YYYY--and then PostgreSQL only uses the first 2 digits of the year (resulting in e.g., a hire date being entered as '10/10/2003' and stored as '2020-10-10'); we could handle this in code--truncating long dates or swapping date-conversion formats--before executing the SQL statement; but is there a way to tweak PostgreSQL to be more flexible on converting date values?
Alternatively, there are screens where date fields are optional (e.g., termination date); and if we do an INSERT/UPDATE with a null value in such a field [e.g., SET <date-field> = TO_DATE('','MM/DD/YY'], then PostgreSQL is spontaneously generating random dates for the field; again, we could add conditional logic to omit the field from the INSERT/UPDATE when the input is null--but is there another way to handle this?

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David Rickard
Software Engineer
The GTS Companies
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