I want to let users specify a date that may or may not include a day and month (but will have at least the year.) The problem is when it is stored as a datetime in the DB; the missing day/month will be saved as default values and I’ll lose the original format and meaning of the date.
My idea was to store the real format in a column as a string in addition to the datetime column. Then I could use the string column whenever I have to display the date and the datetime for everything else. The downside is an extra column for every date column in the table I want to display, and printing localized dates won’t be as easy since I can’t rely on the datetime value… I’ll probably have to parse the string.
I’m hoping I’ve overlooked something and there might be an easier way.
(Note I’m using Rails if it matters for a solution.)
As proposed by Jhenzie, create a bitmask to show which parts of the date have been specified. 1 = Year, 2 = Month, 4 = Day, 8 = Hour (if you decide to get more specific) and then store that into another field.
The only way that I could think of doing it without requiring extra columns in your table would be to use jhenzie’s method of using a bitmask, and then store that bitmask into the seconds part of your datetime column.