Use chrono::NaiveDateTime on MySQL timestamp columns

[billy1624]

Hi there, I wonder why we couldn't use chrono::NaiveDateTime on a MySQL timestamp column? It should be compatible. Is there any reason behind it? Thanks!!

[abonander]

Because of the configuration done on startup in MySqlConnectOptions::connect(), TIMESTAMP columns will always be sent and received in UTC.

Allowing a TIMESTAMP to decode as a NaiveDateTime may lead to confusion as it wouldn't match the value that other clients may show when outputting a TIMESTAMP using the local timezone.

If you need to get a NaiveDateTime out of a TIMESTAMP column, I'd recommend doing an explicit conversion with CAST(timestamp_column AT TIME ZONE '-08:00' AS DATETIME) (substituting your UTC offset of choice).

Honestly, we don't touch NaiveDateTime at all in our applications, everything is DateTime<Utc> or time::OffsetDateTime so that there's never any ambiguity.

[billy1624]

Thanks!! @abonander

Encoding and decoding as DateTime<Utc> make sense.