[Resolved] [Resolved] avoiding automatic timestamp (phpMyAdmin)

Fife_Club

I keep track of all my mySQL records 'freshness' by using an automatically updating timestamp(8). My problem is that I want to update a few records but NOT change/update the timestamp. I've found a few old threads in this forum that deal with this but they keep on mentioning command lines to enter somewhere and I don't even know what they're talking about. The only thing I know how to use is phpMyAdmin. Is there any way to avoid the timestamp update in phpMyAdmin? The only other possibilty is thru the web form I use to update data, if I could add a check box that would selectively surpress the automatic timestamp(8) updating.

Thanks.

stolzyboy

go to this page, it tells you all you need to know about timestamp, and the situations in which the timestamp will and will not be updated

Fife_Club

Thanks. Since I'm a newbie, can you tell me if I understand correctly what it all means?

Automatic updating of the first TIMESTAMP column occurs under any of the following conditions:

The column is not specified explicitly in an INSERT or LOAD DATA INFILE statement.
The column is not specified explicitly in an UPDATE statement and some other column changes value. (Note that an UPDATE that sets a column to the value it already has will not cause the TIMESTAMP column to be updated, because if you set a column to its current value, MySQL ignores the update for efficiency.)
You explicitly set the TIMESTAMP column to NULL.

When I update thru my webpage I don't actually have a field for the timestamp because it automatically uses today's date. But reading this, does that mean that if I added the timestamp field to my html form I would have two choices:

a) leave it blank and it will automatically update to today's date
b) fill in a valid value and it will use that value and not automatically overide it with todays date. (* special footnote, that I can not use the same exact date that is already in the database)

Is this correct or did I misunderstand it? If that's correct then great 'cause that sounds easy enough. Thanks again.

stolzyboy

that's how i read it...

Sxooter

Couldn't you do something like:

update table set field1='abc', field2='def', datefield=datefield;

Yep, I just tried it and it worked.

stolzyboy

well i see it is resolved, what resolved it, what Sxooter suggested

Fife_Club

Well I haven't had a chance to actually try it out yet but I plan on trying the 'add a timestamp field to the html form on my update page' method that you suggested (or agreed with). I expect it should work out fine. If not I'll try the other suggestion next. (I clicked resolved because of your sig 😉 )

Fife_Club

FYI, I'm wrong. It didn't work thru the web interface. Specifying a specific date didn't help.

However, I did find one way. It's not as easy but it did work. Going thru phpMyAdmin didn't work initially but when I changed the "function" pulldown menu from "now" to nothing I was then able to specify any timestamp value I wanted. And it doesn't need to be reset so you're good to go for next time as long as you normally want timestamp to be today's.

Not what I expected but hey, It worked 😃