In my MySQL database I have dates going back to the mid 1700s which I need to convert somehow to ints in a format similar to Unix time. The value of the int isn't important, so long as I can take a date from either my database or from user input and generate the same int. I need to use MySQL to generate the int on the database side, and python to transform the date from the user.
Normally, the UNIX_TIMESTAMP function, would accomplish this in MySQL, but for dates before 1970, it always returns zero.
The TO_DAYS MySQL function, also could work, but I can't take a date from user input and use Python to create the same values as this function creates in MySQL.
So basically, I need a function like UNIX_TIMESTAMP that works in MySQL and Python for dates between 1700-01-01 and 2100-01-01.
Put another way, this MySQL pseudo-code:
select 1700_UNIX_TIME(date) from table;
Must equal this Python code:
1700_UNIX_TIME(date)
I don't have MySQL here installed, but when I look here: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/date-and-time-functions.html#function_to-days - I see an example TO_DAYS('2008-10-07') returning 733687.
The following Python function returns datetime(2008,10,7).toordinal() = 733322, which is 365 less than the MySQL's output.
So take this:
from datetime import datetime
query = '2008-10-07'
nbOfDays = datetime.strptime(query, '%Y-%m-%d').toordinal() + 365
and it should work for dates between 1700 and 2100.