Recently I have been exploring using Diesel for a simple Rust web application. I quickly ran into a very confusing trait bound error, listed below when integrating with chrono. It took me a while to understand and fix the error, which I thought I should write down for later!

The error only started showing up when I queried a specific model:

error[E0277]: the trait bound `DateTime<Utc>: FromSql<diesel::sql_types::Nullable<diesel::sql_types::Timestamptz>, Pg>` is not satisfied
  --> src/main.rs:85:64
   |
85 |         let choices: Vec<Choice> = Choice::belonging_to(&poll).get_results(&pgconn).expect("Failed to get relations");
   |                                                                ^^^^^^^^^^^ the trait `FromSql<diesel::sql_types::Nullable<diesel::sql_types::Timestamptz>, Pg>` is not implemented for `DateTime<Utc>`
   |
   = help: the following implementations were found:
             <DateTime<Utc> as FromSql<diesel::sql_types::Timestamptz, Pg>>
   = note: required because of the requirements on the impl of `Queryable<diesel::sql_types::Nullable<diesel::sql_types::Timestamptz>, Pg>` for `DateTime<Utc>`
   = note: required because of the requirements on the impl of `Queryable<(diesel::sql_types::Integer, diesel::sql_types::Text, diesel::sql_types::Integer, diesel::sql_types::Nullable<diesel::sql_types::Timestamptz>), Pg>` for `(i32, std::string::String, i32, DateTime<Utc>)`
   = note: required because of the requirements on the impl of `Queryable<(diesel::sql_types::Integer, diesel::sql_types::Text, diesel::sql_types::Integer, diesel::sql_types::Nullable<diesel::sql_types::Timestamptz>), Pg>` for `models::Choice`
   = note: required because of the requirements on the impl of `LoadQuery<PooledConnection<ConnectionManager<PgConnection>>, models::Choice>` for `diesel::query_builder::SelectStatement<schema::choices::table, query_builder::select_clause::DefaultSelectClause, query_builder::distinct_clause::NoDistinctClause, query_builder::where_clause::WhereClause<diesel::expression::operators::Eq<schema::choices::columns::poll_id, diesel::expression::bound::Bound<diesel::sql_types::Integer, &i32>>>>`

error: aborting due to previous error; 1 warning emitted

I stumbled into this closed issue, which didn’t really help me, but it did inspire me to review the src/schema.rs:

table! {
    choices (id) {
        id -> Int4,
        details -> Text,
        poll_id -> Int4,
        created_at -> Nullable<Timestamptz>,
    }
}

The created_at column is what is causing issues for me, and I noticed that it’s wrapped in a Nullable. Meanwhile, my struct looks like:

#[derive(Associations, Debug, Identifiable, Queryable, Serialize)]
#[belongs_to(Poll)]
pub struct Choice {
    id: i32,
    details: String,
    poll_id: i32,
    created_at: DateTime<Utc>,
}

Turns out the Nullable wrapper around the Timestamptz SQL type was causing behavior that I didn’t want. The underlying problem ended up being that my table definition didn’t include a NOT NULL despite including a DEFAULT NOW().

Naturally, altering the statement to be created_at TIMESTAMPTZ NOT NULL DEFAULT NOW() caused my compilation error to disappear, fun!