Question

I am running into a slight problem, I need to generate a report that focuses on the changes on certain fields in a database. What I figured to do, is something like this

“If Updated, Insert today’s date in seperate field”

that way, when I generate the report, I can verify which entries have been modified by checking the date.

Problem is, I am unsure how to do this with php/codeigniter

Thanks for the tips!

Answer 1

You could add a timestamp field to your table structure

your_field timestamp default current_timestamp on update current_timestamp

Take a look at the manual for the available syntax

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/timestamp.html

edit.
If you need to update the time only if specific fields change, then you need a trigger.

create table test (
id int not null auto_increment primary key,
field1 int,
field2 int,
field3 int,
last_update datetime)
engine = myisam;


delimiter //
drop trigger if exists update_time //
create trigger update_time before update on test
for each row begin
    if new.field2 <> old.field2 or new.field3 <> old.field3 then
        set new.last_update = now();
    end if;
end //
delimiter ;

in my example last_update field will be update with current time only if field2 or field3 change.