Recording a Row’s Creation Time
Problem
You want to record the
time when a record was created, which TIMESTAMP
will do, but you want that time not to change when the record is
changed, and a TIMESTAMP
cannot hold its value.
Solution
Actually, it can; you just need to include a second
TIMESTAMP
column, which has different properties
than the first.
Discussion
If you want a column to be set initially to the time at which a
record is created, but remain constant thereafter, a single
TIMESTAMP
is not the solution, because it will be
updated whenever other columns in the record are updated. Instead,
use two TIMESTAMP
columns and take advantage of
the fact that the second one won’t have the same
special properties of the first. Both columns can be set to the
current date and time when the record is created. Thereafter,
whenever you modify other columns in the record, the first
TIMESTAMP
column will be updated automatically to
reflect the time of the change, but the second remains set to the
record creation time. You can see how this works using the following
table:
CREATE TABLE tsdemo2 ( t_update TIMESTAMP, # record last-modification time t_create TIMESTAMP, # record creation time val INT );
Create the table, then insert into it as follows a record for which
both TIMESTAMP
columns are set to
NULL
, to initialize them to the current date and
time:
mysql>INSERT INTO tsdemo2 (t_update,t_create,val) VALUES(NULL,NULL,5);
mysql>SELECT * FROM tsdemo2;
+----------------+----------------+------+ ...
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