Question

Is there any way to convert the warning that MySQL is issuing about an invalid datetime into a hard error? I’ve tried using SET sql_mode='TRADITIONAL'; which apparently is supposed to turn (some) things that are warnings into errors, but it does not have any effect here. This is MySQL 5.1.56. Something that works on a session-level would be ideal, but I’ll take what I can get.

mysql> describe test_table2;
+----------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field    | Type        | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+----------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| value    | int(11)     | YES  |     | NULL    |       |
| name     | varchar(16) | YES  |     | NULL    |       |
| sometime | datetime    | YES  |     | NULL    |       |
+----------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> select * from test_table2;
+-------+-------+---------------------+
| value | name  | sometime            |
+-------+-------+---------------------+
|     1 | one   | 2002-09-01 10:00:00 |
|     2 | two   | 2002-09-02 11:00:00 |
|     3 | three | 2002-09-03 12:00:00 |
|     4 | four  | 2002-01-04 13:00:00 |
|     5 | five  | 2002-01-05 14:00:00 |
+-------+-------+---------------------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> select * from test_table2 where sometime = 'foo';
Empty set, 2 warnings (0.00 sec)

Warning (Code 1292): Incorrect datetime value: 'foo' for column 'sometime' at row 1
Warning (Code 1292): Incorrect datetime value: 'foo' for column 'sometime' at row 1

Answer 1

With SET sql_mode='TRADITIONAL', doing an INSERT with an invalid date causes an error, but doing a SELECT with an invalid date still causes a warning. You can trigger the error by passing the (possibly invalid) date value to this query first:

CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE IF NOT EXISTS date_guard (date DATE) SELECT 'foo' AS date;

where ‘foo’ is the date value you want to validate.