Created Expected created to be (Time | Nil) but got (Float64 | String) - oop

Question

I am new to this amber framework,crystal lang and object oriented programming in general . I was following the tutorials and tried to create a simple form using this scaffold
amber g scaffold item name:string path:string type:string size:float created:date
I can see that this class has been created on the models folder
class Item < Granite::Base
connection pg
table items
column id : Int64, primary: true
column name : String?
column path : String?
column type : String?
column size : Float64?
column created : Time?
timestamps
end
When i launched the app and tired to insert a new item i got this error
Created Expected created to be (Time | Nil) but got (Float64 |
String).
This is the code of the .slang form
== form(action: "/items/#{item.id.to_s}", method: item.id ? :patch : :post) do
== csrf_tag
.form-group
== text_field(name: "name", value: item.name, placeholder: "Name", class: "form-control")
.form-group
== text_field(name: "path", value: item.path, placeholder: "Path", class: "form-control")
.form-group
== text_field(name: "type", value: item.type, placeholder: "Type", class: "form-control")
.form-group
== text_field(name: "size", value: item.size, placeholder: "Size", class: "form-control")
.form-group
== text_field(name: "created", value: item.created, placeholder: "Created", class: "form-control")
== submit("Submit", class: "btn btn-success btn-sm")
== link_to("Back", "/items", class: "btn btn-light btn-sm")
I am guessing that when i input a value like 2020-01-01 00:01:00 this is handled as a string but i need this to be converted to a Time type. I presume this needs to happen on the related controller file, but i don't know how to do this.
This is the code that gets executed when i try to create a new item.
def create
item = Item.new item_params.validate!
if item.save
redirect_to action: :index, flash: {"success" => "Item has been created."}
else
flash[:danger] = "Could not create Item!"
render "new.slang"
end
end
thanks,
gurrurin

Answer 1

I was able to make thsi work by creating some new fucntions
class Item < Granite::Base
...
def set_id (id : Int64)
#id = id
end
def set_name (name : String)
#name = name
end
def set_filetype (filetype : String)
#filetype = filetype
end
def set_filesize (filesize : Float64)
#filesize = filesize
end
def set_filepath (filepath : String)
#filepath = filepath
end
def set_created (cr : Time)
#created = cr
end
and then used those after inilializing an empty item
item = Item.new
item.set_name(params[:name])
item.set_filetype(params[:filetype])
item.set_filesize(params[:filesize].to_f64)
item.set_filepath(params[:filepath])
item.set_created(Time.parse(params[:created],"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %z", Time::Location::UTC))
though i dont think this is the best solution here .
Since this parmas object stores everything as strings i suspect that when you initialize a new item with this the a string like ' 2020-01-01 00:01:00 UTC' is not converter to the apropriate Time type. Other types like Int or Float seem to work fine with no isseus.
item = Item.new item_params.validate!

Answer 2

You don't need any of those extra setter methods, they are already defined by the column macro. You don't need an extra created column, there are already created_at and updated_at columns created by the timestamps macro and they are updated for you when creating a new record and saving a modified record.
Other than that if you DID create a column that was a Time type you would do
item.created = Time.parse(params[:created],"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %z", Time::Location::UTC)
and Granite will do the right conversion for each database engine when you save and read the record.