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I recently faced a problem when I didn't want Rails' timestamp "magic" columns to be updated during update of records in database. I have a site where recently updated pages are displayed on front page, and I use updated_at timestamp to identify the most recently updated ones. However, the system also has a feature to reorder pages, where only the 'position' attribute is updated, and not the actual page content. The reorder operation can't be counted as a real update. However, any saves or update_attribute operations on a model fire up the magic columns update.

However, there's a simple way to permanently turn this feature off. Here's how I implemented it:

ActiveRecord::Base.record_timestamps = false #temporarily turn off magic column updates

@page.update_attribute(:position, pos)

ActiveRecord::Base.record_timestamps = true #turning updates back on

This entry was posted on Friday, April 18th, 2008 at 2:10 pm and is filed under Ruby on Rails. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.