`ActiveModel::from_json` fails to deserialize TimeDateTimeWithTimezone fields to NotSet when field is missing from JSON payload
Author: PacificBirdCreated Aug 17, 2026Updated Aug 24, 2026
Labelshelp-wanted
Description
This is a continuation of #3160, which was closed due to thinking that things were closed by SeaQL/sea-query#1093. This sea-query fixed the issues happening for optional values, but didn't remedy the deserialization problems for non-optional ones.
When deserializing an ActiveValue using from_json, if a TimeDateTimeWithTimezone field doesn't have a corresponding value in the JSON payload, somewhere along the way it defaults to a stringified version of the unix epoch, which causes the following error down the line:
Json Error: invalid type: string "'1970-01-01 00:00:00.000000 +00:00'", expected an `OffsetDateTime`Steps to Reproduce
This is a minimal example of the exact problem I'm having:
use sea_orm::entity::prelude::*;
use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize};
#[sea_orm::model]
#[derive(Clone, Debug, PartialEq, Serialize, Deserialize, DeriveEntityModel)]
#[sea_orm(table_name = "example")]
#[serde(rename_all = "UPPERCASE")]
pub struct Model {
#[sea_orm(primary_key, auto_increment = false)]
#[serde(rename = "STATION_ID")]
pub unit_id: i32,
pub created_at: TimeDateTimeWithTimeZone,
}
impl ActiveModelBehavior for ActiveModel {}
let payload = r#"{ "data": [
{"STATION_ID": 100000}
]}"#;
let result = serde_json::from_str::<serde_json::Value>(&payload)
.unwrap()
.get("data")
.and_then(serde_json::Value::as_array)
.unwrap()
.into_iter()
.filter_map(|val| {
let x = <ActiveModel>::from_json(val.clone());
dbg!(&x); // Json Error: invalid type: string "'1970-01-01 00:00:00.000000 +00:00'", expected an `OffsetDateTime`
x.ok()
})
.collect::<Vec<_>>();
assert!(!result.is_empty());Expected Behavior
Any missing fields from the JSON payload should just deserialize as NotSet in the ActiveModel, which they did in 2.0.0-rc32.
Source: SeaQL/sea-orm