Date Formats and Conversions

We have a intranet site we're converting to PostgreSQL; there are numerous
pages where users have to enter dates (for search ranges, hire dates etc);
the dates are assumed to be in MM/DD/YY format in the code (using
TO_DATE(<variable>, 'MM/DD/YY')--but users being users, sometimes dates get
entered as MM/DD/YYYY--and then PostgreSQL only uses the first 2 digits of
the year (resulting in e.g., a hire date being entered as '10/10/2003' and
stored as '2020-10-10'); we could handle this in code--truncating long
dates or swapping date-conversion formats--before executing the SQL
statement; but is there a way to tweak PostgreSQL to be more flexible on
converting date values?
Alternatively, there are screens where date fields are optional (e.g.,
termination date); and if we do an INSERT/UPDATE with a null value in such
a field [e.g., SET <date-field> = TO_DATE('','MM/DD/YY'], then PostgreSQL
is spontaneously generating random dates for the field; again, we could add
conditional logic to omit the field from the INSERT/UPDATE when the input
is null--but is there another way to handle this?

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David Rickard
Software Engineer
The GTS Companies
A TechBooks Company

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