this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
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Programming
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Ehhh, I don't quite agree with this. I've done the same thing where I used a timestamp field to replace a boolean. However, they are technically not the same thing. In databases, boolean fields can be nullable so you actually have 3-valued boolean logic:
true,false, andnull. You can technically only replace a non-nullable field to a timestamp column because you are treatingnullin timestamp asfalse.Two examples:
A table of generated documents for employees to sign. There's a field where they need to agree to something, but it's optional. You want to differentiate between employees who agreed, employees who disagreed, and employees who have yet to agree. You can't change the column from
is_agreedtoagreed_at.Adding a boolean column to an existing table. These columns need to either default to an value (which is fair) or be nullable.
Using a nullable Boolean to represent 3 distinct states just adds confusion and complexity to your system. In most cases I would prefer to use an enum with 3 fields which is non nullable.