Why MongoDate is converted to string ?

[alexandre-butynski]

The default behavior is to convert MongoDate to string after the requests.

public function setRawAttributes(array $attributes, $sync = false)
{
    foreach($attributes as $key => &$value)
    {
        // Convert MongoId to string
        if ($value instanceof MongoId)
        {
            $value = (string) $value;
        }

        // Convert MongoDate to string
        else if ($value instanceof MongoDate)
        {
            $value = $this->asDateTime($value)->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');
        }
    }

    parent::setRawAttributes($attributes, $sync);
}

Why ? If we save a date as a MongoDate, it is to be able to make operation on this field. For example, detect the number of days since a start date.

Today, we have very strange cases like this one :

$program = Program::create('date_start' => new MongoDate());

var_dump($program->date_start);
var_dump(Program::find($program->id)->date_start);

// Output :
class MongoDate#2497 (2) {
  public $sec =>
  int(1384179623)
  public $usec =>
  int(0)
}
string(19) "2013-11-11 14:20:23"

And a default string format is not very useful because it is different for each country (I'm french...). Something more useful could be to override the MongoDate __toString method but I'm not sure that it is the role of this package.

[jenssegers]

If you want to work with "custom" date fields, you need to specify them in your model like you would with the original Eloquent model. https://github.com/jenssegers/Laravel-MongoDB#dates

[alexandre-butynski]

Thank's for your fast answer. I have missed a part of the story !

The following line solve my issue :

protected $dates = array('date_start');

So, it's not very important to me now, but why convert MongoDate to string ? It could be the role of a custom getter, to let everyone choose its own output format.

(I let you close the issue if it's ok for you).

[jenssegers]

The reason I convert it to a string is mainly for the JSON output of the model. But it should not really matter if you specify the date fields in the model class.

[rcwsr]

Why does the documentation say "Internally, these dates will be converted to MongoDate objects when saved to the database."?

[jenssegers]

@robcaw, only if you specify them in your class: protected $dates = array('birthday');

[rcwsr]

Oh right. I have protected $dates = array('dob'); in my User class, but
as far as I can see, it is stored as a string in the db.

On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 7:22 PM, Jens Segers notifications@github.comwrote:

@robcaw https://github.com/robcaw, only if you specify them in your
class: protected $dates = array('birthday');

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/64#issuecomment-29232861
.

[jenssegers]

That should not happen. This functionality is tested in https://github.com/jenssegers/Laravel-MongoDB/blob/master/tests/ModelTest.php#L312

[rcwsr]

Nevermind, I hadn't saved the date string as a DateTime object when creating my User. Thanks!