pl.datetime does not raise with argument values outside of the specified domain

[baggiponte]

Checks

• I have checked that this issue has not already been reported.
• I have confirmed this bug exists on the latest version of Polars.

Reproducible example

import polars as pl

pl.select(pl.datetime(year=2025, month=1, day=1, hour=24))

Log output

shape: (1, 1)
┌──────────────┐
│ datetime     │
│ ---          │
│ datetime[μs] │
╞══════════════╡
│ null         │
└──────────────┘

Issue description

null

Expected behavior

The code should raise

Installed versions

--------Version info---------
Polars:              1.21.0
Index type:          UInt32
Platform:            macOS-14.4.1-arm64-arm-64bit
Python:              3.12.8 (main, Dec 19 2024, 14:22:58) [Clang 18.1.8 ]
LTS CPU:             False

----Optional dependencies----
Azure CLI            <not installed>
adbc_driver_manager  <not installed>
altair               5.5.0
azure.identity       <not installed>
boto3                <not installed>
cloudpickle          <not installed>
connectorx           <not installed>
deltalake            <not installed>
fastexcel            <not installed>
fsspec               <not installed>
gevent               <not installed>
google.auth          2.38.0
great_tables         <not installed>
matplotlib           3.10.0
numpy                2.2.2
openpyxl             <not installed>
pandas               2.2.3
pyarrow              19.0.0
pydantic             <not installed>
pyiceberg            <not installed>
sqlalchemy           2.0.37
torch                <not installed>
xlsx2csv             <not installed>
xlsxwriter           <not installed>

[mcrumiller]

This is not specific to hour, any invalid value produces a null:

>>> pl.select(pl.datetime(pl.lit("a"), -20, -25))
shape: (1, 1)
┌──────────────┐
│ datetime     │
│ ---          │
│ datetime[μs] │
╞══════════════╡
│ null         │
└──────────────┘

I wonder if pl.date/pl.datetime should have a strict parameter?

[baggiponte]

I don't think they should have a strict parameter. if the value is out of the domain, as per the docs, it should raise.

The "silent null value" feels like going against the zen of Python in a way. It's an implicit choice. Raise by default forces you to deal with the error explicitly. By the way, it would also mirror what happens in the standard library:

from datetime import datetime
datetime(2025, 1, 1, 24)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ValueError: hour must be in 0..23