How to bind ISO8601 TSQL DATETIME parameter with PDO?

Question

It seems that PDO has a problem with ISO 8601 formatted timestamps.

I'm connecting from 64-bit Ubuntu 16.04 running PHP 7.0.8 using the Microsoft® ODBC Driver 13 (Preview) for SQL Server®

Here's my simple table:

CREATE TABLE dtest (
    "stamp" DATETIME
);

Works:

$pdoDB = new PDO('odbc:Driver=ODBC Driver 13 for SQL Server;
  Server='.DATABASE_SERVER.';
  Database='.DATABASE_NAME,
  DATABASE_USERNAME,
  DATABASE_PASSWORD
);
$pdoDB->setAttribute( PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION );

$sql = "INSERT INTO dtest (stamp) VALUES ('2011-03-15T10:23:01')";
$stmt = $pdoDB->prepare($sql);
$params = [];
$stmt->execute($params);

Does not work:

$sql = "INSERT INTO dtest (stamp) VALUES (?)";
$stmt = $pdoDB->prepare($sql);
$params = ['2011-03-15T10:23:01'];
$stmt->execute($params);

Fatal error: Uncaught PDOException: SQLSTATE[22018]: Invalid character value for cast specification: 0 [Microsoft][ODBC Driver 13 for SQL Server]Invalid character value for cast specification (SQLExecute[0] at /build/php7.0-lPMnpS/php7.0-7.0.8/ext/pdo_odbc/odbc_stmt.c:260)

This works if I delete the T so '2011-03-15T10:23:01' becomes '2011-03-15 10:23:01'

$sql = "INSERT INTO dtest (stamp) VALUES (?)";
$stmt = $pdoDB->prepare($sql);
$params = ['2011-03-15 10:23:01'];
$stmt->execute($params);

But I'm writing a script that runs nightly on about 2 million records, so I'd really rather not bear the overhead of running millions of str_replace('T', ' ', $param)

I've also tried using bindParam, but it gives the same error:

$sql  = "INSERT INTO dtest (stamp) VALUES (:tdate)";
$stmt = $pdoDB->prepare($sql);
$date = '2011-03-15T10:23:01';
$stmt->bindParam(':tdate',$date,PDO::PARAM_STR);
$stmt->execute();

Is there anyway to bind and execute this parameter as is? I'm a little dubious of the error message because it appears to be coming from SQL Server as if PDO did its job fine, but that doesn't make sense since it's able to handle the type conversion without parameterization.

I've also tried SQL conversion:

Works:

$sql = "INSERT INTO dtest (stamp) VALUES (CONVERT(DATETIME, '2011-03-15T10:23:02', 126))";
$stmt = $pdoDB->prepare($sql);
$params = [];
$stmt->execute($params);

Does not Work:

$sql = "INSERT INTO dtest (stamp) VALUES (CONVERT(DATETIME, ?, 126))";
$stmt = $pdoDB->prepare($sql);
$params = ['2011-03-15T10:23:02'];
$stmt->execute($params);

@MonkeyZeus nope, but I've been off all weekend so I'm gonna take another stab at it today. — Jeff Puckett
@JeffPuckettII Could you solve this? This doesn't happen only with dates, but all bound parameters. — Frondor
@Frondor for this particular problem, I was importing safe (pre-sanitized) data, so I skipped the binding altogether. Not a solution for user-input, so no, I still haven't solved it. I just try to avoid Microsoft's poorly supported junk as much as possible. — Jeff Puckett

MonkeyZeus MonkeyZeus · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-19T18:30:37

You will need to use SQL Server's built-in convert() function and specify the format (126) which you are giving it:

$sql = "INSERT INTO dtest (stamp) VALUES (CONVERT(DATETIME, '2011-03-15T10:23:01', 126))";

The documentation mentions :mmm at the end of your string so you might need to manually add :000 at the end of your date string for this to work.

How to bind ISO8601 TSQL DATETIME parameter with PDO?

Works:

Does not work:

Works:

Does not Work:

2 Answers