Renaming the created_at, updated_at columns of ActiveRecord/Rails

Question

I want to rename the timestamp columns defined in timestamp.rb . Can the methods of timestamp.rb be overwritten? And what has to be done in the application that the module w

Answer 1

Or you could just make your own columns (DateTime) and just manually set the created_at column when you create and set the updated_at column when you update. That might be easier than the hack above. That's what I'm gonna do. Better yet, update rails to allow us to change these names.

Answer 2

A sol'n which does not use a monkey patch; use the reversible block during your migration:

class CreateTest < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def change

    create_table :test do |t|
    end

    # set the timestamp columns default to now()
    reversible do |dir|
      dir.up do
        tables = [
          :test
        ]
        tables.each do |t|
          execute <<-SQL
            ALTER TABLE #{t.to_s}
              add column created timestamp without time zone default now();
          SQL
          execute <<-SQL
            ALTER TABLE #{t.to_s}
              add column updated timestamp without time zone default now();
          SQL
        end
      end
      dir.down do
        # no need to do anything, the rollback will drop the tables
      end
    end

  end
end

Answer 3

In Rails 6.0 the instance method timestamp_attributes_for_create does not exist anymore. This method got pushed up onto the class method level and is now private

https://apidock.com/rails/v6.0.0/ActiveRecord/Timestamp/ClassMethods/timestamp_attributes_for_create

This change was introduced with this commit https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/77ff9a0adbd1318b45203a76c64561b115245603

You could still overwrite self.timestamp_attributes_for_create but I strongly suggest not to since the private API can be changed without further notice or bigger version bumps.

For Rails 6 I don't see a given "Rails way" to define custom created_at / updated_at columns.

I suggest following this answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/18197702/924050

Answer 4

There is no simple way to do that. You can accomplish this either by overriding the ActiveRecord::Timestamp module, or by writing your own one to do the magic for you.

Here is how the magic works.