One of the problems that we have when using postgresql is the management of time stamps.  This is especially true when using PQexecparams() for reasons that I will not go in to in this post; suffice it to say that when building INSERT statements that use time stamps you may need to get creative.

One of the problems that I have encountered is when overloading functions.  This is because in essence time_t is of type int so if you have 2 overload functions thus, you will get a compile error.

void my_func(int i) {
	//do_something.....
}

void myfunc(time_t i) {
	//do_something.....
}

Using typedef is not an option because the compiler just sees it as an alias, resulting in the same error, so if we want to do this in a clean and easily readable manner then we need to get creative and use a struct which we are simply going to call tm_epoch.

#include <ctime>

struct tm_epoch { 
	const time_t te;
	tm_epoch(time_t te)
	:
	te(te){}
};

All that we are doing here is creating a struct that we can pass a value that will be used to initialise a local time_t variable to use later.

Now when we declare our overloaded functions we will no longer have a compile error because one variable is of type int and the other is of type tm_epoch.

struct tm_epoch { 
	const time_t te;
	tm_epoch(time_t te)
	:
	te(te){}
};

void my_func(tm_epoch t) {
  	//do_something... 
}

void myfunc(int i) {
	//do_something...
}

Now when we declare a variable of type tm_epoch and a variable of type int, when we call our overloaded function with  the appropriate argument, the program will know which version of the function to call.

Here is a little proof of concept application that demonstrates how this works in practice:

#include <ctime>
#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

struct tm_epoch { 
	const time_t te;
	tm_epoch(time_t te)
	:
	te(te){}
};

void myfunc(tm_epoch curTime) {

  	struct tm *ts {0};
  	ts = localtime(&curTime.te); 	
  	char buf[20];
    strftime(buf, sizeof(buf), "%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S", ts);
    cout << buf << endl;
  	
}

void myfunc(int i) {
	cout << i << endl;
}

int main() {

	//Should be 2017-09-21 09:44:05
	tm_epoch t = 1505983445;
	int i = 1505983445;
	
	myfunc(t);
	myfunc(i);
	
	return(0);

}