timezone aware datetime causes error when saving on mysql

[jvisinand@…]

It appears that the mysql database engine doesn't support timezone aware datetimes. Although I always save datetime with the timezone set to the TIME_ZONE settings, I have an error. It works on Postgres.

Way to reproduce it:

• Create a Model with a DateTimeField field
• Create an object and set this field to a timezone aware datetime
• Save it:

  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "<console>", line 1, in <module>
    File "/Volumes/MacData/Users/juju/mixin/events/models.py", line 472, in save
      super(MxEvent, self).save()
    File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/site-packages/django/db/models/base.py", line 251, in save
      ','.join(placeholders)), db_values)
    File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/site-packages/django/db/backends/util.py", line 19, in execute
      return self.cursor.execute(sql, params)
    File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/site-packages/MySQLdb/cursors.py", line 168, in execute
      if not self._defer_warnings: self._warning_check()
    File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/site-packages/MySQLdb/cursors.py", line 82, in _warning_check
      warn(w[-1], self.Warning, 3)
    File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/warnings.py", line 62, in warn
      globals)
    File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/warnings.py", line 102, in warn_explicit
      raise message
  Warning: Out of range value for column 'start_date' at row 1
  

Work around: Save non timezone aware datetime.

[clint]

I got around this in my code by converting my datetimes to naive before using them to create a model. ala:

date_posted = date_posted.replace(tzinfo=None)
new_post = Post(title=..., date_posted=date_posted...)
new_post.save()

[Malcolm Tredinnick]

This is correct behaviour. Django cannot save that data and so an error is raised. We cannot work around that (without throwing away information), so have to stop there.