http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=390082


in reply to Expand Class::DBI Field to DateTime Object

This approach works really well, but I've been caught out by the way it handles unknown or undefined times.

MySQL stores unrecognised date/times as 0000-00-00 00:00:00, as described in the MySQL manual. In the case of TIMESTAMP fields, unknown values are also stored in this form, as opposed to using NULL.

I've worked around this problem by storing timestamps that may not exist in external tables and referencing them using Class::DBI's might_have relationship.

I've raised a bug report for this in RT. Although it's a documented feature of MySQL, I appreciate the argument that DateTime::Format::MySQL shouldn't have to work around it.