Null date fields in Postgres

[Anon]

Hello everyone.

I am working on a PHP/HTML front-end to a database, which is PostgreSQL. I have several date fields in my table, all with NOT NULL set to 'NO' (how's that for a double negative?). Yet when my web page goes to update the table, when I don't specify a date, I get ERROR: Bad date external representation ''.
How do I convince Postgres to accept a null for a date field?

thanks
allen

[[deleted]]

Do you insert a NULL for the date, ala

INSERT INTO table this=that, FIELD=NULL

or did you simply not specify the date ala:
INSERT INTO table this=that;

[Anon]

but that means you are supplying a date of '' which isn't the same as no date.

Does your insert look like this:

insert into table (field1,date) values ('something','');

or does it look like this:

insert into table (field1) values ('something');

The second should work, but the first WILL fail. Note you can use words like TODAY, TOMORROW, YESTERDAY, and NOW and add days or subtract them like:

Today-7 (one week ago) or NOW+365 etc when setting a date. But if it's in the list of things being updated and you have to supply either a date or a NULL (without tics) like so:

insert into table (name,date) values ('Steve',NULL);

[Anon]

i have the same problem!!!
but i have to insert my values using variables in the sql_string.now, how can i set my date_variable to be NULL(without commas(?)) or to be '$var' (with commas(?))?
bye bye
and thanks for your attention and excuse my 'newbieness'

[[deleted]]

You can use an IF statement to build your query dynamically:

$sQuery = "INERT INTO table
date_field
VALUES(";
if ($date_var=='NULL')
{
$sQuery .=$date_var;
}
else
{
$sQuery .="'",$date_var."'";
};
$sQuery .= ")";