Question

Its possible gets a created and updated time of one row directly with sql/mysql?
I know a method to got a table last update but i was wondering if there will be a quick natively way to do this with sql.

I made a way to do this creating automatically 2 fields in table(created_date and updated_date) but I decided to ask you first because there is probably a better way to do this.

I hear suggestions!
Thanks for help.

Answer 1

I don’t know of any way to do this without having two extra columns in the table – but what I do to update them is to have a database trigger do it rather than the application logic.

There are some benefits, but also some drawbacks to using a trigger approach.

Firstly, the benefits:

• It is much easier to add it this way as an afterthought to an app. Very little changes to the appliation/site code. The trigger takes care of it all. (assuming you insert new rows by specifying field names)
• The triggers will take care of any other ways to change the data – someone changing a row from a console would still cause the trigger to fire as would another application using the same database.
• Allows the possibility (though I don’t do it) of having a pure row inserted/updated table.

But some downsides too:

• Unless you know that triggers are doing these updates, it can often be overlooked and the triggers become forgotten when migrating to another server etc