MySQL: NOW() giving me zeros

Question

I have a table which I want to record the timestamp of every order at every insertion time. However, I'm getting zero values for the timestamps.

Here's my schema:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS orders(
            order_no VARCHAR(16) NOT NULL,
            volunteer_id VARCHAR(16) NOT NULL,
            date TIMESTAMP DEFAULT NOW(),
            PRIMARY KEY (order_no),
            FOREIGN KEY (volunteer_id) REFERENCES volunteer(id)
            ON UPDATE CASCADE ON DELETE CASCADE)

Answer 1

"The DEFAULT value clause in a data type specification indicates a default value for a column. With one exception, the default value must be a constant; it cannot be a function or an expression. This means, for example, that you cannot set the default for a date column to be the value of a function such as NOW() or CURRENT_DATE"

Source: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/data-type-defaults.html

You are going to have to name the column in your insert query and pass Now() as value.

Answer 2

Make sure you are not inserting rows with an empty date:

INSERT INTO orders VALUES (1, 1, '');

The above would insert an 0000-00-00 00:00:00 date.

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The following works as expected in MySQL 5.0.51a:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS orders(
            order_no VARCHAR(16) NOT NULL,
            volunteer_id VARCHAR(16) NOT NULL,
            date TIMESTAMP DEFAULT NOW(),
            PRIMARY KEY (order_no));

INSERT INTO orders (order_no, volunteer_id) VALUES (1, 1);
INSERT INTO orders (order_no, volunteer_id) VALUES (2, 1);
INSERT INTO orders (order_no, volunteer_id) VALUES (3, 1);
INSERT INTO orders (order_no, volunteer_id) VALUES (4, 1);

SELECT * FROM orders;

+----------+--------------+---------------------+
| order_no | volunteer_id | date                |
+----------+--------------+---------------------+
| 1        | 1            | 2010-03-29 17:10:37 |
| 2        | 1            | 2010-03-29 17:10:40 |
| 3        | 1            | 2010-03-29 17:10:44 |
| 4        | 1            | 2010-03-29 17:10:48 |
+----------+--------------+---------------------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)