Class yii\behaviors\TimestampBehavior

TimestampBehavior automatically fills the specified attributes with the current timestamp.

To use TimestampBehavior, insert the following code to your ActiveRecord class:

use yii\behaviors\TimestampBehavior;

public function behaviors()
{
    return [
        TimestampBehavior::className(),
    ];
}

By default, TimestampBehavior will fill the created_at and updated_at attributes with the current timestamp when the associated AR object is being inserted; it will fill the updated_at attribute with the timestamp when the AR object is being updated. The timestamp value is obtained by time().

Because attribute values will be set automatically by this behavior, they are usually not user input and should therefore not be validated, i.e. created_at and updated_at should not appear in the rules() method of the model.

For the above implementation to work with MySQL database, please declare the columns(created_at, updated_at) as int(11) for being UNIX timestamp.

If your attribute names are different or you want to use a different way of calculating the timestamp, you may configure the $createdAtAttribute, $updatedAtAttribute and $value properties like the following:

use yii\db\Expression;

public function behaviors()
{
    return [
        [
            'class' => TimestampBehavior::className(),
            'createdAtAttribute' => 'create_time',
            'updatedAtAttribute' => 'update_time',
            'value' => new Expression('NOW()'),
        ],
    ];
}

In case you use an yii\db\Expression object as in the example above, the attribute will not hold the timestamp value, but the Expression object itself after the record has been saved. If you need the value from DB afterwards you should call the refresh() method of the record.

TimestampBehavior also provides a method named touch() that allows you to assign the current timestamp to the specified attribute(s) and save them to the database. For example,

$model->touch('creation_time');

Public Properties

Public Methods

Protected Methods

Property Details

$createdAtAttribute public property

The attribute that will receive timestamp value Set this property to false if you do not want to record the creation time.

public string $createdAtAttribute = 'created_at'

$updatedAtAttribute public property

The attribute that will receive timestamp value. Set this property to false if you do not want to record the update time.

public string $updatedAtAttribute = 'updated_at'

$value public property

The value that will be assigned to the current attributes. This can be an anonymous function, callable in array format (e.g. [$this, 'methodName']), an Expression object representing a DB expression (e.g. new Expression('NOW()')), scalar, string or an arbitrary value. If the former, the return value of the function will be assigned to the attributes. The signature of the function should be as follows,

function ($event)
{
    // return value will be assigned to the attribute
}

In case, when the value is null, the result of the PHP function time() will be used as value.

public mixed $value = null

Method Details

$model->touch('lastVisit');