Insert datetime entry into table with TIMESTAMP data type

Question

I am trying to create a system (with a discord bot, but that's not relevant to this) where it lists infractions of a user, like when it happened, where, why, etc. and I want a "date" datatype that logs the timestamp that it happened.

I tried having the DATE datatype to be "timestamp" (as well as "datetime", but the same error happens)

conn1 = apsw.Connection('./dbs/warns.db')
warns = conn1.cursor()

warns.execute(
    """
    CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS warns
    (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
    date timestamp,
    server string,
    user string,
    author string,
    reason string)
    """
)

def add_warn(guild: str, user: str, author: str, reason):
    now = datetime.datetime.utcnow()
    with conn1:
        warns.execute("INSERT INTO warns (date, server, user, author, reason) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?)", (now, guild, user, author, reason))

I end up getting a TypeError: Bad binding argument type supplied - argument #1: type datetime.datetime error

Which database are you using: mysql, oracle, sql-server, ...? Please add the relevant tag to your question. — GMB, Oct 06 '19 at 21:05

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 06 '19 at 21:21

From the syntax of the create table statement (AUTOINCREMENT without an underscore) and the apsw tag, I suspect that you are using a SQLite database.

If you are looking to insert the current timestamp to a timestamp column, my first suggestion is to do it directly in SQL, instead of using a variable generated in python. In sqlite, CURRENT_TIMESTAP gives you the current date/time as a timestamp:

warns.execute(
    "INSERT INTO warns (wdate, server, user, author, reason) VALUES (CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, ?, ?, ?, ?)", 
    (guild, user, author, reason)
)

Another option, that would furthermore simplify your code, is to set a default for the timestamp column when creating the table. Then, you can just ignore this column when inserting, and rest assured that the correct value will be assigned:

warns.execute(
    """
        CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS warns (
            id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
            wdate timestamp DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
            server string,
            user string,
            author string,
            reason string
        )
    """
)

def add_warn(guild: str, user: str, author: str, reason):
    with conn1:
        warns.execute(
            "INSERT INTO warns (server, user, author, reason) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?)", 
            (now, guild, user, author, reason)
        )

Note: date is not a sensible column name, since it clashes with a datatype name. I renamed it wdate in all the above code.

Insert datetime entry into table with TIMESTAMP data type

1 Answers1