Thread

The only information we have on form submission is the human readable text, so by default EE does not have second precision. It uses the second value from the current server time. There is a hidden config item to show the seconds on that form. In that case they should be stored consistently.

$config['include_seconds'] = 'y';

Another really odd thing is that the date fields don’t seem to be moving forward when I submit them.  After I submitted the entries yesterday, I double checked all of the entries and they were all correct, but this morning I started getting emails that the times listed were incorrect.

Stephen, your issue sounds quite strange. We’re aware of some odd date behavior when submitting, but after that initial submit nothing in EE touches the date data. It sounds like this has happened before? Was that on the same entries?

Hi Pascal.  Thanks for getting back to me.

Yes, it is a bit strange.  I’ve seen this happen on several channels that all have custom date fields with several different entries.  I’m using the custom date fields to show the time and date of baseball and softball games on our site.  I always double check the listings after I submit them to make sure the time and date are correct on the site, but I’ve have been getting emails from people a day or two later saying that the times are off by 1 minute.  So a game that starts at 8:30 PM will now be listed at 8:29 PM.  This doesn’t happen for all entries, but maybe for 25% of them.  I haven’t been able to figure out a pattern or any sort.

Thanks for your help.

If you have a local install without any third party plugins and put in one of the items that is shifting, can you replicate the problem on a clean install? Or let us know one date/time to test against..

Hi Sue - I haven’t had a chance to set this up on a clean local install yet, but I’ll try to do that on Monday.  I just had this happen to me again, but this time the one minute time shift occurred when I submitted the entry.

Yesterday I edited and submitted one of my entries with the three custom date fields and immediately saw the times in those date fields jump forward one minute.  I looked at the list of those channel entries in the control panel and noticed that the entry time for the entry that jumped forward was exactly the same as the entry time for another entry in the same channel.  For example, in the control panel entries list, the entry that I edited had its date listed as 04/29/11 02:15 pm and another entry right next to it also has it’s date listed as 04/29/11 02:15 pm.  I changed the entry date and time to not be exactly the same, made another edit, and submitted the entry and the one minute jump forward didn’t occur after that.

I know that the times are stored with seconds as well in the database and there’s no way both of those entries could have had the same minutes and seconds because I originally submitted them both one right after the other, but do you think that could have anything to do with it?

I tried to replicate this on another channel that was having the same issue, but wasn’t able to.

Hi Stephen,

Okay. Thanks for the update but just to clarify, in a previous post you said that times were sometimes appearing a minute earlier than entered but you are also seeing time jump forwards? If you find a entry time that appears to be one minute behind the actual entry time can you please check the DB timestamp with a tool like this. Are the seconds set to be :59 in that case?

Please do let us know if you can replicate this on a clean install.

Cheers

Greg

Hi Greg,

Sorry for the very late response and for the confusing post.  I am only seeing times jump one minute earlier (from 5:30 to 5:29 for example).  I started using the word “forward” in that last post when I should have just kept saying “earlier”.

I haven’t been able to find an entry time that is one minute behind the actual entry time.  The entry times don’t change at all, it’s only the custom date field times.  If I enter 05:30 in the custom date field for the time, sometimes after I submit the entry the time will change to 05:29.  I still haven’t been able to figure out any pattern for this - it doesn’t not appear to be related to the entry times being the same as I mentioned earlier because I just had this happen on an entry that doesn’t have any other entries with the same entry time.

Sort of at a loss to explain it.  Maybe I should just cross my fingers that I don’t see it after 2.2 comes out?

Hi Stephen—

Thanks for your patience on this. This does indeed seem like a bug to me, but we need to try to figure out what’s triggering it before submitting it as a bug report. Otherwise the devs won’t know how to reproduce the problem and therefore can’t fix it. So….

From what I can tell so far, the times that are shifting are only times inside custom date fields where there are multiple custom date fields in a channel’s custom field group, correct? And the entry’s Entry Date, Expiration Date, and Comment Expiration Date are unaffected, correct? If there are any other consistent patterns you’ve noticed, post them back here.

Also, just to make sure we’ve covered it, this is 2.1.3 build 20110411 without any core hacks, correct? Are any of your templates interacting with the database directly (using the Query module or PHP/MySQL)? Could you post back a list of all the add-ons you’re using on this installation? And are you using Pascal’s suggestion:

$config['include_seconds'] = 'y';

If you copy this installation locally, can you still get it to reproduce the problem? And if so, does it still happen after upgrading the local install to the latest beta (EE 2.1.5 build 20110510)?

Also, is there anyone else posting or updating entries on the site in question, Stephen?

So is this thing fixed finally? I have same problem with publishing entries, approx 25% of them have same thing happening. As I see it, this is just a suggestion to use

$config['include_seconds'] = 'y';

it is not a fix.

In few threads I have talked about date/time issue and how difficult is to set it in minutes and seconds accurate. You should really do something about it. Thank you Kevin and Pascal for this suggestion, but I hope u will try to figure out why is this happening.

Crnaovca,

We’ve actually got this one on our radar, and we’re discussing a fix for it. It’s actually a pretty complicated problem, so it’s not a quick fix. In the meantime, we offer the ‘includes_seconds’ config variable as a workaround.

ok, thnx

Stephen T & eeart, do we have any updates from you?

And for clarification- we have entered this as a bug here.  To clarify- do you guys have any shifting when you can actually SEE the seconds in the field you are submitting?  I suspect if you see the seconds, there is no shifting.  In which case, one fix is to make sure that config is affecting all date fields.  It doesn’t appear to be right now.

No. It is only annoying to enter seconds, but now, as I am saving it, it stays saved.

Thanks for the confirmation, Crnaovca.  The gist of the problem is- if seconds aren’t sent as part of the post data, EE does a bit of estimation.  That estimation could be improved to not cause a minute drop (happens if the seconds come out to 00), but the only way to have pinpoint accuracy is to actually specify the seconds in the field.  But show_seconds isn’t impacting all fields.