`date` columns should be provided as `DateTime` instead of `String`.

[mateusfccp]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Currently, if I have a table with a column of type date, when I query for the data, the runtime type of the data is String.

For instance, for a date value of 2024-02-25, I receive the string "2024-25-02".

Describe the solution you'd like
Instead, we should receive DateTime.

For instance, for a date value of 2024-02-25, I should receive the object DateTime(2024, 02, 25).

Describe alternatives you've considered
The alternative is to do nothing and let the consumer parse the date. This is how we have to do currently.

void main() async {
	final data = await supabase.from('members').select('birthday');
	for (final datum in data) {
		final birthday = DateTime.parse(datum['birthday']); // Manually parsing the received string
		// Do something with `birthday`...
	}
}

[Vinzent03]

I think postgrest-js just returns them as string as well. We would have to do the same as you and manually try to parse every column. This may cause issues with columns that are not intended to be DateTime objects. It's better if the api is clean and everything is string/int/bool, because the data is coming in as JSON.

[dshukertjr]

We would need the type generation to happen for this. It would be awesome if we could support it though!

[mateusfccp]

This may cause issues with columns that are not intended to be DateTime objects.

Do you think it's common to define a column as date and don't want it to be a DateTime? If I want some data to be a string, wouldn't I rather use varchar or text as the column type?

It's better if the api is clean and everything is string/int/bool, because the data is coming in as JSON.

Is it a requirement that Data comes as JSON in Dart? I don't see any advantage in doing so...

[Vinzent03]

The postgrest endpoint only returns a json for our query, we don't have any information about the type of the columns. Therefore, we cannot do any converting.

[mateusfccp]

The postgrest endpoint only returns a json for our query, we don't have any information about the type of the columns. Therefore, we cannot do any converting.

Didn't know about this detail.

Maybe we should have this information, as it's really important.

[AlexandreRoba]

IMHO I do not think a date field on supabase should be casted to a date time by default on flutter. If you do how would you make the distinction between a date that by definition does not have a time and conceptually represent any time of the date and the datime time at 00:00:00... :( And I'm not even talking about the time zone.... Leaving it as a String make more sense. I have created my own date object in dart to handle those date and have implemented a parse method from string. I have a datetime constructor from my date object if I need to but then I know exactly what I'm doing.

[mateusfccp]

IMHO I do not think a date field on supabase should be casted to a date time by default on flutter. If you do how would you make the distinction between a date that by definition does not have a time and conceptually represent any time of the date and the datime time at 00:00:00... :( And I'm not even talking about the time zone.... Leaving it as a String make more sense. I have created my own date object in dart to handle those date and have implemented a parse method from string. I have a datetime constructor from my date object if I need to but then I know exactly what I'm doing.

Semantically, date is a date without time. DateTime indeed has a time. Unfortunately, although it makes some sense, Dart has no "Date without time" class in its standard library. However, having it as string is even worse because it is even more far away from a semantically correct object.

We should whether have a proper Date object that can easily be converted to/from DateTime (we could have it as a simple extension type on DateTime so we keep it as a zero-cost abstraction that will simply ignore the time fields/methods) or use DateTime directly and, if you don't want to deal with time, just ignore it.