Setting dates as nullable in laravel

Question

I am having a hard time understanding the inner workings of date fields in laravel. I have a custom date field named called_at and I set it as nullable in the schema. Since it's a date field, I would naturally want it to be a Carbon instance, so in the model I pushed this attribute to the $dates array.

protected $dates = ['called_at'];

In order to be able to set it from the controller, via the request('called_at') input, I would have to set a mutator in the model. So I set one like this:

public function setCalledAtAttribute($date){
    $this->attributes['called_at'] = Carbon::parse($date);
}

But the problem is, even if the user does not provide a date in the input field, the called_at attribute is set to the current timestamp! But I expected it to be NULL.

To get rid of it, I commented out the setCalledAtAttribute mutator. But now it won't even take the input:

InvalidArgumentException Data missing

Bottom line, how can I set my date field nullable in such a way that when a user leaves the input field blank, the called_at field wont be set to current timestamp?

Within your migration $table->timestamp('called_at) just add ->nullable() and then re migrate. Or go in to the database and simply allow null on the field. — Option
– Option, Commented Feb 22, 2018 at 10:47
I mentioned this in the question: "I have a custom date field named called_at and I set it as nullable in the schema" — Tanmay
– Tanmay, Commented Feb 22, 2018 at 10:50

Alexey Mezenin · Accepted Answer · 2018-02-22 10:47:58Z

8

Try to do this:

public function setCalledAtAttribute($date)
{
    $this->attributes['called_at'] = empty($date) ? null : Carbon::parse($date);
}

answered Feb 22, 2018 at 10:47

Alexey Mezenin

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6 Comments

Tanmay Over a year ago

It's working. I have a question though. Why does it set the date field to current timestamp even if nothing is inserted in the form?

Alexey Mezenin Over a year ago

@Eisenheim define the date as ->dateTime() and not ->timestamp()

Tanmay Over a year ago

if I define it as dateTime(), will I be able to take empty value from the form?

Tanmay Over a year ago

Even if I leave it as timestamp and don't set it to dateTime, your code still works (sets null instead of current date).

imabug Over a year ago

@Eisenheim Note that timestamp fields will automatically update any time the record is created or updated. If you don't want this behaviour, then change it to a datetime field.

|

Khalid Dabjan · Accepted Answer · 2018-02-22 11:00:30Z

2

If you use parse on an empty string Carbon::parse('') or null Carbon::parse(null) Carbon will actually return the current date and time So you should check if $date is provided and not null:

$this->attributes['called_at'] = $date ? Carbon::parse($date); : null;

edited Feb 22, 2018 at 11:00

answered Feb 22, 2018 at 10:54

Khalid Dabjan

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1 Comment

Tanmay Over a year ago

thanks for making the issue clear. Laravel should have added this in their documentation. Not everyone has prior knowledge on Carbon :(

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