What type of column should I use for created_at and modified_at in Laravel Eloquent 2?

Question

Should I use DATETEIME? or INT?

Thanks!

EDIT: I'm specifically addressing the

public static $timestamps = true;

flag set in Eloquent models.

Yes. No? Perhaps. Definitely. Are you storing dates, or are you storing integers? With the answer to _that_ question, _your_ question is solved. — Bojangles, Sep 06 '12 at 08:36
Laravel offers the option to automatically take care of this with this variable set in the model : public static $timestamps = true; I'm trying to construct my tables to support this. — brennanag, Sep 06 '12 at 08:38
@JamWaffles Would you consider removing your downvote? Or explain it? — brennanag, Sep 06 '12 at 08:45
Gave you an upvote since this question is not as lame as JamWaffles answer sounds. There are different applications that use the unix timestamp for this. I don't wanna say whats good or bad about it, but they exist and so one should be allowed to question about. — Del Pedro, Sep 06 '12 at 09:15
Thanks. This isn't a question about what is best/worse/right/wrong, it's just a question about what the framework uses, seeing as I couldn't easily find it by googling or looking in the documentation. — brennanag, Sep 06 '12 at 09:23

score 27 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 06 '12 at 08:42

27

Laravel only supports datetime for their timestamps.

answered Sep 06 '12 at 08:42

Jürgen Paul

1

check the pull request I linked as well ;) – Jürgen Paul Sep 06 '12 at 08:46
4

I think it is downvoted because it is not as question which you can answer yourself with a look in laravel's well documented code. So, if you look inside laravel/database/eloquent/model.php and search for timestamp you will see, that there is a public function called timestamp(). Inside this function you will see that $this->updated_at is set with new \DateTime; So it is ever a good practice first to view if you can handle it by yourself. – Dirk Sep 17 '12 at 10:13

score 7 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:26

7

Just as an update: Mich's answer is still valid for Laravel 3 and below,

but as of Laravel 4, it switched to supporting timestamp columns for created_at and updated_at.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:26

Community

answered Jun 11 '15 at 00:30

FireSBurnsmuP

score 5 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 17 '17 at 14:09

5

Laravel 5 defaults is TIMESTAMP

answered Jan 17 '17 at 14:09

Stanislav

3 Answers3