Question

SQLite doesn’t have a data type for dates.

I was wondering if it’s enough to make string comparisons between date strings like Y-m-d H:i:s (the standard sql datetime format).

For example ...WHERE date < NOW().... would this fail in certain situations?

Answer 1

You can store dates in SQLite with the following data types:

• TEXT as ISO8601 strings (“YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.SSS”).
• REAL as Julian day numbers, the number of days since noon in Greenwich on November 24, 4714 B.C. according to the proleptic Gregorian calendar.
• INTEGER as Unix Time, the number of seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.

You can then convert these fake dates using the functions listed here.

Now, you also mentioned function NOW() and that won’t work in SQLite. That’s for MySQL. This will show you SQLite syntax to use:

sqlite> select date('now');
2012-02-12
sqlite> select date('now') = date('2012-02-12');
1
sqlite> select date('now') = date('2012-02-11');
0

So, it is highly recommended for you to use this functions and, on the other side, make sure you don’t use NOW().