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sksingh95's avatar

Laravel created_at vs updated_at having wrong datetime.

Hello Developers Family,

I've come across an issue in Laravel related to incorrect date storage for created_at and updated_at fields. In my config/app.php, the timezone is configured as Asia/Kolkata. As a result, I've identified two specific concerns:

  1. On certain occasions, the created_at time displays a discrepancy of 5-12 hours behind the actual time.
  2. In some instances, the updated_at time is recorded as earlier than the created_at time, which is certainly unexpected behavior.

For a clearer understanding and validation of these observations, I've included a sample below.

Important to note: We are not manually updating created_at and updated_at column anywhere in the application. Also, this issue isn't consistently occurring; rather, it's sporadic, affecting approximately 1 in 1000 records. Your expertise and insights on this matter would be immensely valuable.

mysql> select id, created_at, updated_at, TIMESTAMPDIFF(MINUTE,updated_at,created_at) AS minutes from table_name where updated_at < created_at group by minutes order by minutes DESC;

+------+---------------------+---------------------+---------+

| id | created_at | updated_at | minutes |

+------+---------------------+---------------------+---------+

| 136 | 2023-04-05 10:37:47 | 2023-04-04 22:07:48 | 749 |

| 5098 | 2023-08-23 11:00:10 | 2023-08-22 22:31:11 | 748 |

| 5103 | 2023-08-23 11:00:25 | 2023-08-22 22:33:24 | 747 |

| 5099 | 2023-08-23 11:00:15 | 2023-08-22 22:33:20 | 746 |

| 4682 | 2023-08-14 03:33:29 | 2023-08-13 22:03:29 | 330 |

| 130 | 2023-04-04 04:35:09 | 2023-04-03 23:05:11 | 329 |

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3 replies
josecameselle's avatar

One possible solution to this issue is to ensure that your server, database, php, laravel time settings are all correctly configured to use the 'Asia/Kolkata' timezone:

Check the server’s timezone settings and update them if necessary. On a Linux server, you can use the date command to check the current timezone and the timedatectl command to update it.


Check the database’s timezone settings and update them if necessary. In MySQL, you can use the SELECT @@global.time_zone, @@session.time_zone; command to check the current timezone settings and the SET GLOBAL time_zone = 'Asia/Kolkata'; command to update them.

Check the PHP timezone settings in your php.ini file and update them if necessary. The relevant setting is date.timezone, which should be set to 'Asia/Kolkata'.

Ensure that the timezone setting in your Laravel config/app.php file is correctly set to 'Asia/Kolkata'. You may also need to clear Laravel’s cache by running the php artisan cache:clear, php artisan view:clear, and php artisan config:cache commands.

sksingh95's avatar

@josecameselle, I appreciate your response.

As I mentioned earlier, this issue occurs in only 1 out of every 1000 records. If it were a configuration problem, it should affect all inserted records. Here's my configuration:

  • Server Timezone: UTC
  • Database Timezone: UTC
  • PHP/Laravel Timezone: Asia/Kolkata

I've already incorporated the config:clear and config:cache commands in my deployment script, and we deploy at least once a day, so that's not the issue.

Please let me know if there could be another rare problem causing this behaviour.

1 like
XelaB's avatar

Hello @sksingh95 , we have exactly the same problem, everything works well, except sometimes, without reason! It seems like the timezone change sometimes but we don't change anything, so I don't understand. Did you find any solution since your first message?

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