Using the getUnformatted method on an empty Datetime field

[AAD Web Team]

If I have a Datetime field on my page and the field is not empty then the getUnformatted method returns the integer for the Unix timestamp (as expected), but if my field is empty then getUnformatted returns an empty string. I would have expected it to return the integer 0 as that's the raw value for an uninitialised timestamp.

I think this is unintuitive, and inconsistent with the way the system datetime fields work.

With two non-empty dates (using the current timestamp as an example), you get compatible results:

$page->getUnformatted('my_date') === 1750221096;

$page->getUnformatted('published') === 1750221096;

$page->getUnformatted('my_date|published') === 1750221096;

 With two empty dates (e.g. if the page hadn't been published yet) you get incompatible results:

$page->getUnformatted('my_date') === '';

$page->getUnformatted('published') === 0;

$page->getUnformatted('my_date|published') === null;

I think the getUnformatted method should return an integer 0 for an uninitialised date. Does that sound reasonable, or is there a particular need for it returning a string instead?

I can see that returning a string could be handy if you want to distinguish between an empty date and a date that's actually set to 1 January 1970 at 00:00. If that's the logic to it then I'd submit a pull request for the documentation to be changed so that it's clear what getUnformatted returns with Datetime fields.

[BillH]

To me, representing an unset timestamp with a valid timestamp (i.e. 0) would seem misleading and lose information - even if an intentional 0 seems unlikely to occur!

If for your purposes you want a 0 rather than an empty string, you can simply cast the returned value to an integer:

$myDate = (int) $page->getUnformatted('my_date');