Create/Update tracking

Hypertill DB exposes built-in timestamp getters on every Model, so records can tell you when they were created, updated, or marked as deleted without repeating decorators on each class.

⚠️ Note: Hypertill DB automatically sets and persists the created_at/updated_at fields as millisecond epochs when those columns exist. If you bootstrap with createPlatformAdapter(), those columns are injected for you automatically.

When to use this

Use create tracking:

• When you display to the user when a thing (e.g. a Post, Comment, Task) was created
• If you sort created items chronologically (Note that Record IDs are random strings, not auto-incrementing integers, so you need create tracking to sort chronologically)

Use update tracking:

• When you display to the user when a thing (e.g. a Post) was modified

Notes:

• you don't have to enable both create and update tracking. You can do either, both, or none.
• createdAt, updatedAt, and deletedAt are reserved getters on every Model.
• avoid reusing those property names for unrelated columns.

How to do this

Step 1: Make sure the table has created_at / updated_at:

tableSchema({
  name: 'posts',
  columns: [
    // other columns
    { name: 'created_at', type: 'number' },
    { name: 'updated_at', type: 'number' },
  ]
}),

If you use createPlatformAdapter(), you can skip this schema step because those metadata columns are injected automatically.

Step 2: No per-model declaration is required:

class Post extends Model {
  // ...
}

You can read the built-in getters directly:

post.createdAt // Date | null
post.updatedAt // Date | null
post.deletedAt // Date | null

Again, you can add just created_at if you only need create tracking, or skip updated_at if you do not need update tracking.

How this behaves

If the table has created_at, the current timestamp is set when you first call collection.create() or collection.prepareCreate(). It will never be modified again.

If the table also has updated_at, then after creation, model.updatedAt will have the same value as model.createdAt. Then every time you call model.update() or model.prepareUpdate(), updatedAt will be changed to the current timestamp.

If the table has deleted_at, model.deletedAt is set when you call model.markAsDeleted() or model.prepareMarkAsDeleted().