Comments on: Interesting things about TIMESTAMP data type in MySQL

By: jkj

jkj — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:10:49 +0000

**By default, TIMESTAMP is NOT NULL**

When you do CREATE TABLE you are not specifying the possibility of NULL values. So of course you won’t be able to save a NULL time stamp.

By: Haidong Ji

Haidong Ji — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:18:00 +0000

Cheer James.

Long time no see my friend. Oh yeah, the lazy boy style defaults suit me just fine…

By: James Luetkehoelter

James Luetkehoelter — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:36:53 +0000

Nice post – don’t you love default behaviours?

By: Haidong Ji

Haidong Ji — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:21:40 +0000

You are exactly right kimseong. Thanks a lot! Here is some further testing I did. I live in Chicago area, so it is 6 hours behind the UTC. I adjusted the limit to be 6 hours behind and got the expected results.

mysql> create table t1 (c1 timestamp);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.09 sec)

mysql> insert into t1 values ('1969-12-31 18:00:01');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.03 sec)

mysql> select * from t1;
+---------------------+
| c1                  |
+---------------------+
| 1969-12-31 18:00:01 |
+---------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> insert into t1 values ('1969-12-31 17:59:59');
ERROR 1292 (22007): Incorrect datetime value: '1969-12-31 17:59:59' for column 'c1' at row 1
mysql> insert into t1 values ('2038-01-18 21:14:07');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.02 sec)

mysql> select * from t1;
+---------------------+
| c1                  |
+---------------------+
| 1969-12-31 18:00:01 |
| 2038-01-18 21:14:07 |
+---------------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> insert into t1 values ('2038-01-18 21:14:08');
ERROR 1292 (22007): Incorrect datetime value: '2038-01-18 21:14:08' for column 'c1' at row 1

By: links for 2009-01-05 | Yostivanich.com

links for 2009-01-05 | Yostivanich.com — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:04:23 +0000

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By: Haidong Ji

Haidong Ji — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 02:21:04 +0000

Thanks for that. I will test it out tomorrow.

By: kimseong

kimseong — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:39:18 +0000

TIMESTAMP falls between ‘1970-01-01 00:00:01′ and ‘2038-01-19 03:14:07′

This is probably due to the timezone, since timestamp is timezone aware and is stored in the UTC timezone value. So, your testing of the limit might not be accurate due to your timezone settings.