Having both a Created and Last Updated timestamp columns in MySQL 4.0

Question

I have the following table schema;

CREATE TABLE `db1`.`sms_queue` (
  `Id` INTEGER UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `Message` VARCHAR(160) NOT NULL DEFAULT 'Unknown Message Error',
  `CurrentState` VARCHAR(10) NOT NULL DEFAULT 'None',
  `Phone` VARCHAR(14) DEFAULT NULL,
  `Created` TIMESTAMP NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
  `LastUpdated` TIMESTAMP NOT NULL ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
  `TriesLeft` tinyint NOT NULL DEFAULT 3,
  PRIMARY KEY (`Id`)
)
ENGINE = InnoDB;

It fails with the following error:

ERROR 1293 (HY000): Incorrect table definition; there can be only one TIMESTAMP column with CURRENT_TIMESTAMP in DEFAULT or ON UPDATE clause.

My question is, can I have both of those fields? or do I have to manually set a LastUpdated field during each transaction?

Answer 1

You can have them both, just take off the "CURRENT_TIMESTAMP" flag on the created field. Whenever you create a new record in the table, just use "NOW()" for a value.

Or.

On the contrary, remove the 'ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP' flag and send the NOW() for that field. That way actually makes more sense.

Answer 2

From the documentation:

For one TIMESTAMP column in a table, you can assign the current timestamp as the default value and the auto-update value. It is possible to have the current timestamp be the default value for initializing the column, for the auto-update value, or both. It is not possible to have the current timestamp be the default value for one column and the auto-update value for another column.

Answer 3

There is a trick how to have both timestamps.
But it has a little limitation.

Create and update timestamps with mysql.