Timestampable

The Timestampable behavior will automatically add a created_at and updated_at column and automatically set the values when a record is inserted and updated.

Since it is common to want to know the date a post is made lets expand our BlogPost model and add the Timestampable behavior to automatically set these dates for us.

// models/BlogPost.php

class BlogPost extends Doctrine_Record
{
    // ...

    public function setUp()
    {
        $this->actAs('Timestampable');
    }
}

Here is the same example in YAML format. You can read more about YAML in the YAML Schema Files chapter:

---
# schema.yml

# ...
BlogPost:
  actAs:
# ...
    Timestampable:
# ...

If you are only interested in using only one of the columns, such as a created_at timestamp, but not a an updated_at field, set the disabled to true for either of the fields as in the example below.

---
BlogPost:
  actAs:
# ...
    Timestampable:
      created:
        name: created_at
        type: timestamp
        format: Y-m-d H
      updated:
        disabled: true
# ...

Now look what happens when we create a new post:

$blogPost = new BlogPost();
$blogPost->title = 'Test blog post';
$blogPost->body = 'test';
$blogPost->save();

print_r($blogPost->toArray());

The above example would produce the following output:

$ php test.php
Array
(
    [id] => 1
    [title] => Test blog post
    [body] => test
    [version] => 1
    [created_at] => 2009-01-21 17:54:23
    [updated_at] => 2009-01-21 17:54:23
)

Look how the created_at and updated_at values were automatically set for you!

Here is a list of all the options you can use with the Timestampable behavior on the created side of the behavior:

Here is a list of all the options you can use with the Timestampable behavior on the updated side of the behavior that are not possible on the created side: