database/sql: support time.Time and arrays

[anoopbhat]

Please answer these questions before submitting your issue. Thanks!

What version of Go are you using (go version)?

go version go1.7.3 linux/amd64

What operating system and processor architecture are you using (go env)?

GOARCH="amd64"
GOBIN=""
GOEXE=""
GOHOSTARCH="amd64"
GOHOSTOS="linux"
GOOS="linux"
GOPATH="/root/Catalog"
GORACE=""
GOROOT="/usr/local/go"
GOTOOLDIR="/usr/local/go/pkg/tool/linux_amd64"
CC="gcc"
GOGCCFLAGS="-fPIC -m64 -pthread -fmessage-length=0"
CXX="g++"
CGO_ENABLED="1"

What did you do?

Running a query in postgresql where a column in a table is an array.

column description
consistencydate | timestamp without time zone[] | not null

A query i'm running is

    rows, err := c.db.Query("select parent, filename, mtime, size, mode, consistencydate from " + appTableName + " where parent ilike '%' || $1 || '%' or filename ilike '%' || $2 || '%'", fs.Name, fs.Name)

    if err != nil {
            return nil, errors.WithStack(err)
    }

    defer rows.Close()

    for rows.Next() {
            var f models.FileRecord
            if err := rows.Scan(&f.Parent, &f.Filename, &f.LastModificationTime, &f.Size, &f.Mode, &f.ConsistencyDate); err != nil {
                    return nil, errors.WithStack(err)
            }

            records = append(records, &f)
    }

    if err := rows.Err(); err != nil {
            return nil, errors.WithStack(err)
    }

    return records, nil

What did you expect to see?

a proper conversion from a timestamp without timezone[] field to []time.Time

What did you see instead?

an error
2016/11/07 13:40:15 sql: Scan error on column index 5: unsupported Scan, storing driver.Value type []uint8 into type *[]time.Time

I think that sql.Scan() doesn't support []time.Time. If there's no plan to support it, that's ok. I just want to know.

[bradfitz]

/cc @kardianos

[kardianos]

Which database driver are you using?

[anoopbhat]

the postgresql driver pq.

import (
"database/sql"
_ "github.com/lib/pq"
"github.com/pkg/errors"
"strings"
)

[derekperkins]

This issue seems like it is combining two separate limitations with database/sql.

1. No native time.Time support
2. No support for slices database/sql/driver: support slices? #16235

Since there is already an issue for slice support, I think this issue should be retitled to database/sql: Natively support time.Time.

This would be awesome for 1.9.

[kardianos]

Be aware of other custom types: denisenkom/go-mssqldb#61

[gopherbot]

CL https://golang.org/cl/38533 mentions this issue.

[kardianos]

The above CL will allow drivers that want to support time.Time and arrays to do so.