Another stupid newbie question: How to save only if any safe attributes are changed?

Yii 1.1 General Discussion
1

I am trying to update a record with a few user maintainable fields as well as some fields (creation & update timestamps and created_by & updated_by fields) that are set programmatically.

Yii’s default behavior is to resave the record and reset the update timestamp and the updated_by fields whenever the “Save” button is clicked even if none of the user enterable fields have been modified.

I wish to change this behavior. I can think of many ways to do so, but I am wondering what the preferred method would be among more experienced yii programmers.

Thank you very much for having mercy on me.

2

If you want this behavior (save only when changed) you’ll have to develop it yourself.

You have to extend CActiveRecord and develop this lightweight solution:

add a flag-property like $_changed.

Override function __set($name,$value) and check if the property to set is a database field. If so, set $_changed to true.

Override function save() and call parent::save(). If it returns true, set $_changed to false.