Reading dates from Sqlite with Delphi / Firedac - sqlite

When reading date fields from Sqlite into Firedac, I get conversion errors. The fields are called dates but with string entries (yyyy-mm-dd). I set the option for Datetime Format = string, but I've discovered that while null values are handled OK, empty values (= '') produce an error which I can't figure out how to handle.

You can enable StrsEmpty2Null option, which will automatically convert all empty strings to NULL state. But it's for all values and parameters handled by the data component. So it's not the cure.
I'm not sure what you're doing, but in general, NULL is a state and you cannot convert NULL state to a value because it's a state indicating no value. So as you cannot convert empty string to date.
So try to describe more about your value to string conversion, so we can suggest a proper way to deal with it. For SQLite, I'd suggest using DATE pseudo data type and convert values through the built-in formatting expressions.

Related

Sqlite get the date part of a DateTime and return as a DateTime, not a string

In Sqlite I want to extract the date and time portions of a DateTime field separately in a view and return them also as a datetime, not strings. I've tried Cast, Date(), datetime(), but they all return strings.
I've read the SQLite documentation and understand how there is not an actual Date data type. Yet a Table field defined as DateTime is able to be parsed as a Date by an Excel query, but calculations on that field are not. I'm trying to do all data prep in the database view.
My data has the following field taken directly from the table definition:
LastModifiedDate datetime
I want the date (without time) to have the same DateTime data type as LastModifiedDate, not Text, because I use this view in many spreadsheets. I can apply Excel Date functions and formatting to LastModifiedDate field directly as returned from the ODBC query to Excel, and want to do the same to the Date-only part. I don't want to have to put a string-to-date conversion in every spreadsheet when I know it can get the date natively from Sqlite in LastModifiedDate.
SELECT LastModifiedDate,
date(LastModifiedDate) as Datepart,
cast(LastModifiedDate as numeric) as Date2
FROM Transactions
LastModifiedDate Datepart Date2
2019-07-28 18:22:38.9165394 2019-07-28 2019
LastModifiedDate in the above query is interpreted in Excel as a date to which date formats and date functions can be applied with no further processing required. Datepart above is returned as Text to Excel, and I can't apply date functions and formats without further pre-processing in Excel. I would like Datepart to be interpreted a date in Excel just as LastModifiedDate is.
I'm looking at the ch-werner.de sqliteodbc-0.9998. It will return an ODBC TIMESTAMP type only if the column decltype starts with timestamp or datetime. It returns ODBC TIME only for decltypes starting with time and ODBC DATE only for decltypes starting with date.
sqlite3 provides this decltype only for result table columns that are direct database column references. So if your SELECT statement has some expression that is more than a plain column reference, the decltype is lost. sqlite3 works like this at least up to version 3.39.0. It is documented.
The CAST expression converts the value of given expression to a storage classes by the determined affinity of the given declared type, but does not assign decltype to the result.
If you want to see the decltypes for query columns, you can use the sqlite3 cli and give it command .stats 2. Then it'll output the column declared types for each statement it executes.
If the decltype is found, the sqliteodbc-0.9998 will always parse string values into ODBC types. If DSN Option JDConv is enabled, it'll also parse floating point julianday values (whether provided as float or a string of a float) into ODBC types and when writing it'll write floating point into database.
If you can afford to change the schema, you can add a generated virtual column. This is cheap in storage, because data is not affected, but it costs when you query the column. This column can calculate other column into the values and decltypes you need for ODBC.
ALTER TABLE data ADD COLUMN
Datepart date AS (date(LastModifiedDate))
Then to get the Datepart, you simply query the column.
SELECT Datepart FROM data

DateTime Type Gets Converted into bigint in SQLite

I Am new to SQLite.I am trying to create table from my model class in which I have DATETIME field.when sqlite table creatd from This Class The DATETIME column creted of type bigint.I know the reason because SQLite doesn't support DATETIME
So what should I do to create Column Of type TEXT in SQLITE without Chnging DATETIME type in my model Class. I found some post regarding to this but don't get satisfactory solution.please help.Thanks
You can configure how DateTimes are stored in your connection string. Change the attribute DateTimeFormat to either "ISO8601" or "CurrentCulture".
But: I would not recommend to do that. If you ever want to sort by a datetime or you want to filter rows (give me all entries from the last 2 weeks) then the bigint approach is the most efficient one. While ISO8601 datetime strings are sortable, that is most likely not the case with localised CurrentCulture strings. So if you really want human-readable strings in your database then choose the ISO version.

Sqlite C/C++ API - Get timestamp value with select query

I use sqlite3 C/C++ API to retrieve rows from a table using SELECT query. I don't see any sqlite3_column_timestamp() to retrieve a timestamp column value after sqlite3_step().. How to get timestamp values ?
SQLite does not have a special timestamp data type.
When you want to use any of SQLite's date and time functions, you have to store timestamps in one of the formats supported by them, i.e., a string like YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS or HH:MM:SS, a julian date number, or a Unix timestamp number.
You can declare a table column type as DATETIME, but SQLite will just ignore that type; SQLite always allows to put values of any type in any column. Such a declaration would be useful only as documentation.
The column/value accessors will only have types corresponding to the data types they support directly (NULL, INTEGER, REAL, TEXT, BLOB).
You would use the TEXT access to get/set the column value of dates.
There are some helper functions within SQL that they provide that let you to handle them in your queries.
I am not familiar with SQLite Manager, but I would assume that it is only reporting the data type that the table was declared with.
When parsing CREATE statements, sqlite understands the intention of many well supported datatypes and automatically maps them to what is appropriate for its internal storage structure. VARCHAR would be mapped to TEXT, for instance. I assume the column was declared DATETIME and sqlite just internally mapped it to TEXT.

How to know which in *format* is a date returned, in ASP.NET

The following code, d has the current date. Depending on the current locale, it will return a date.
Dim d As Date = Date.Today
Note: I don't want to check whether the date is valid or not, but rather to know, whether it is in a 'dd-MM-yyyy', 'MM-dd-yyyy' or any other date format..
EDIT (29/06/2012 - Friday):
The reason I am asking this question is because I am sick of trying to deal with dates in ASP.NET. I build a project on my local PC, where dates are "dd/MM/yyyy" and as soon as I upload it to the production server (usually in US, hence MM/dd/yyyy) the code breaks.
So I usually deal with dates by converting them into yyyyMMdd format and also keep them in the database like that. That is the closest I get to an exception-free coding.
In this case, it makes sense that there is no way to get the format from a returned date string. Therefore, I will carry on with my approach.
Date.Today is a DateTime, not a string. Thus, it does not have an inherent format.
It will return a Date, which I believe is a VB alias for DateTime. (If it's not, just use DateTime explicitly to be idiomatically .NET rather than using the legacy VB types.)
A DateTime value itself doesn't have a format, any more than an int is in decimal or hex. It's only when you convert the value to a string that a format is applied, and then it depends on how you convert it to a string. You shouldn't use a string conversion until you really need to, and then you should control the format so that it works the way you want it to.
As far as possible, convert text data into its "natural" type as early as possible, and keep it in that type for as long as possible. For example, avoid converting to strings when passing values in SQL queries - instead, use parameterized SQL where you can specify the parameter value as a DateTime.
What you want to know is found in:
CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern
This is the format string that will be used when you call
d.ToShortDateString()
You need to be TOLD; there's no other way. Take for example:
6/12/2012
It's valid in dd/mm/yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy format
Which one do you pick if you don't know the locale/format beforehand?
Date values don't have an intrinsic format. In other words, you can format the date to any string representation you need but the opposite conversion from a string back to a Date value requires that you know in which format you are receiving this date string.

Creating a DateType field on sqlite3

i want to create a table on sqlite with one field as DateTime (YYYY-MM-DD) , how i can create it?
i'm trying with:
create table test (_date datetime);
but i'm not sure if the datatype is correct 'cause i can do this:
create table test (_date nyanType);
and no error occours
SQLite is rather unique in that its columns are not statically typed. You can technically store a string in a column that was created as an integer column.
If you check out the SQlite Documentation for types, you'll see that SQLite dosn't have a date type, but it exposes date and time functions that are suitable for manipulating dates that are stored as TEXT, REAL or INTEGER. You should use those instead.

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