Sqlite “OperationalError: near ”05“: syntax error”

Question

I'm working with sqlite and I'm struggling a little bit handling date and time. I have a table created with a field Date of type text .

I need to set that field to a custom time, f. ex: '2021-01-18 05:07:37' that I get with this code (I'm using now datetime just as an example)

date = datetime.now(timezone.utc).strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
print(date)
# 2021-01-18 05:07:37

Then I create a record with this date:

command = f'''INSERT INTO Twitter (Date, Content)
                VALUES(datetime({date}), "Some cool content")'''
print(command)
# INSERT INTO Twitter (Date, Content)
            VALUES(datetime(2021-01-18 05:13:54), "Some cool content")
conn.execute(command)
conn.commit()

This code raises an error:

OperationalError
Traceback (most recent call last)

in
2 VALUES(datetime({date}), "Some cool content")'''
3 print(command)
----> 4 conn.execute(command)
5 conn.commit()

OperationalError: near "05": syntax error

I'm not sure what is wrong, I think I'm using sqlite datetime format correctly, but the error seems to be related to the format somehow, any suggestions about how can I solve this?

EDIT

I noted that if I add manually the date to the sqlite command, it works nice, like doing this:

command = f'''INSERT INTO Twitter (Date, Content)
                VALUES(datetime('2021-01-18 05:07:37'), "Some cool content")'''

The issue appears when I dynamically add the datetime as a variable, I'm not sure if I'm missing anything.

Answer 1

The issue is that the sqlite is not familiar with the datetime type of python so by trying to insert datetime(2021-01-18 05:13:54) into Date field you're receiving OperationalError: near "05": syntax error and when you're adding the single quotes like '2021-01-18 05:07:37' the date is converted to a string and able to be inserted into the table.
You can try to do

command = f'''INSERT INTO Twitter (Date, Content)
                VALUES(datetime('{date}'), "Some cool content")'''

OR

command = f'''INSERT INTO Twitter (Date, Content)
                VALUES(datetime("{date}"), "Some cool content")'''

Note: the sqlite datetime function expecting a string as described here https://sqlite.org/lang_datefunc.html