CI 4 Object of class DateTime could not be converted to string

Question

I am getting an object from an API of Twilio. To be more specific, I am using the following function https://www.twilio.com/docs/conversations/api/conversation-participant-resource

When I try to insert de datetime objects to mysql I receive the error explained on the subject of this post.

Also, I tested change the fields type to set as date, datetime, text or varchar but nothing works.

Can somebody give me a clue? Any help is much appreaciated Thanks

Model:

$sql=[
                    "id_conversation"=>$conversation_id,
                    "identity"=>$record->identity,
                    "identity_proxy_address"=>$explode_whatsapp[1],
                    "date_created"=>$record->dateCreated,
                    "date_updated"=>$record->dateUpdated,
                ];
                $builder->insert($sql);

Another way tried too:

$begin = new \DateTime($record->dateCreated);

error: DateTime::__construct() expects parameter 1 to be string, object given

Answer 1

What that error says is that it can't use an instance of DateTime as a string, which is unrelated to your database column types or how you instantiate the DateTime instance.

Since $record->dateCreated and $record->dateUpdated already are instances of DateTime, you need to get the dates as strings:

"date_created" => $record->dateCreated->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'),
"date_updated" => $record->dateUpdated->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'),

(And keep your database column types here as datetime)