TypeORM: Adding created_at and updated_at columns

Updated: February 6, 2022 By: A Goodman Post a comment

In TypeORM, you can add a created_at column and a updated_at column by making use of the CreateDateColumn and UpdateDateColumn decorators, respectively. These columns will be automatically initialized and updated to the current date and time (that is, the current timestamp).

Example:

import {
  Entity,
  PrimaryGeneratedColumn,
  Column,
  CreateDateColumn,
  UpdateDateColumn,
} from 'typeorm'

@Entity()
export class Product {

  @PrimaryGeneratedColumn()
  id: number;

  @Column()
  name: string;

  @CreateDateColumn()
  created_at: Date;

  @UpdateDateColumn()
  updated_at: Date;
}

If you don’t want to use underscore (snake case) properties in your entity class but want your columns’ names are in underscore form, you can do like so:

import {
  Entity,
  PrimaryGeneratedColumn,
  Column,
  CreateDateColumn,
  UpdateDateColumn,
} from 'typeorm'

@Entity()
export class Product {

  @PrimaryGeneratedColumn()
  id: number;

  @Column()
  name: string;

  @CreateDateColumn({name: 'created_at'})
  createdAt: Date;

  @UpdateDateColumn({name: 'updated_at'})
  updatedAt: Date;
}

Now the createdAt and updatedAt properties are all camelCase and the code looks a little bit nicer.

Reference: TypeORM special columns (typeorm.io).

Further reading:

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