title: How to insert PostgreSQL timestamp with Laravel model
body: <p>I'm using Laravel 4 with PostgreSQL. I created PostgreSQL timestamp fields with a migration:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$table-&gt;dateTime('start_date');
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I tried inserting a timestamp generated with <strong>strtotime</strong> and received an error:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Invalid datetime format: 7 ERROR: invalid input syntax for type timestamp: "1383321600" 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Hacking around it works:</p>
  
  <pre><code>new MyModel(array('start_date' =&gt; DB::raw("to_timestamp($start_date)")));
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>It seems like there should be a better way. Laravel itself generates timestamps without issue for the created_at and updated_at automatically-populated dates.</p>