Making ActiveRecord / Rails use actual mysql TIMESTAMP columns

Question

Rails\' :timestamp column type lies; it\'s actually just an alias for :datetime.

I\'m using mysql, and I want to use actual unix-timestamp

Answer 1

I'm pretty noobish, but I'll give it a shot. What if you were to add your own custom column, or overwrite the default ones? You can use custom data types with a string like so:

t.add_column :mysql_timestamp, 'timestamp'

and then somewhere else in your logic

def mysql_timestamp
  Time.now.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
end

Not sure about b). Only one way to find out!

Answer 2

this works (just added whitespace character to type definition, so :timestamp doesn't override it):

     t.add_column :sometable, :created_at, 'timestamp '