Feat: add an $onUpdate method to columns

[Angelelz]

This will close #956. Also related to #843.

Upon merging this PR, the user will now be able to register a function that returns the value to be inserted automatically to the column on UPDATE queries.
This will work very similar to $default()/$defaultFn() but it would work for updates.
Please keep in mind that by extension, if you register a function in this method, this function will also be used for inserts only if no .default() or .$default() were registered.

Usage

export const users = pgTable("users", {
  id: serial("id").unique().primaryKey(),
  name: text("name").notNull(),
  managerId: integer("user_id").references((): AnyPgColumn => users.id),
  createdAt: timestamp("created_at", { precision: 3 }).default(
    sql`current_timestamp(3)`,
  ),
  updatedAt: timestamp("updatedAt").$onUpdateFn(() => new Date()),
});

the updatedAt column will automatically be updated each time the row is updated.

[cah4a]

Any progress here?

[faysalhaque]

need this feature...

[raikusy]

Any progress with this?

[cah4a]

Looks like this is working for MySQL:

export const users = mysqlTable("users", {
  ...
  updatedAt: datetime("updatedAt").default(sql`CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE SET CURRENT_TIMESTAMP`),
});

[raikusy]

Please release this 🙏

[buzinas]

Is there anything we can do to unblock this feature?

[jakeleventhal]

  ...

Is there a postgres workaround

[Angelelz]

  ...

Is there a postgres workaround

Yes, the Postgres way of dealing with this is with stored procedures

[raikusy]

[Postgres] Anyone looking for an workaround until this is merged, run this on your DB -

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION trigger_set_timestamp ()
	RETURNS TRIGGER
	AS $$
BEGIN
	NEW.updated_at = now();
	RETURN NEW;
END;
$$
LANGUAGE plpgsql;

[joshsmith]

Is there an update on this?

[John-Dennehy]

Looks like this is working for MySQL:

export const users = mysqlTable("users", {
  ...
  updatedAt: datetime("updatedAt").default(sql`CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE SET CURRENT_TIMESTAMP`),
});

For anyone else that found this didn't work, I got it working on Planetscale/MySQL by removing "SET" from the string:

updatedAt: datetime("updated_at").default(sql`CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP`)

[noah-haub]

Any progress on this? Would be a super helpful feature!

[marcuslary]

what is blocking the release of this feature?

[summaarum]

Actually been waiting on this since December. @dankochetov please have another look at this :)

[naquiroz]

@dankochetov @AndriiSherman could review this PR please?

[naquiroz]

Does anyone have a temporal approach that works in postgres, while this PR is not merged?

[predragnikolic]

@naquiroz see #956 (comment)

[naquiroz]

@naquiroz see #956 (comment)

@predragnikolic I saw that but I had zero clue on how to implement that in drizzle. I want to keep it versioned in a migration but I had no idea how to do it

[TommyHPettersen]

Is there any status on this? Have been waiting for this feature

[arielweinberger]

Folks, Drizzle is making a lot of noise and it has great potential, but not receiving a single comment or acknowledgement from a teammate on a PR open for 5 months does not look good.

[hauserkristof]

@AndriiSherman , @dankochetov can you. please take a look at this?
@tamasbelinszky @tamasbelinkszky , me and the Wattly team are waiting for this for so long!

Thanks!

[predragnikolic]

There is a subscribe button, please use it.

I am sure that a lot of people are subscribed and waiting for an official update from drizzle devs.

It doesn't help flooding this thread(and people email inbox) with messages like above.

Thank you!

[AndriiSherman]

Will try to release today

outdated

[GetPsyched]

Typo here^

Suggested change

	* Alias for {@link $defaultFn}.
	* Alias for {@link $onUpdateFn}.

[AndriiSherman]

thanks, I'll fix before release

[houmark]

This was released today.

I feel like there's a lot of limitations to this as is, which greatly affects the potential use cases possible.

a) It would be nice to have the current updating record/item as a possible context to pass to the update function, so you can use values from other fields to update the field. I guess you could do a select query inside, but that seems unnecessary if the current updating item is right there.

b) It does not seem possible to use an async function to return the new value? Use case: Creating a hash value based on the value of other fields for example using sha256 using web cryptos crypto.subtle.digest which is promised based.

[AlexBlokh]

@houmark yeah, that makes sense

[houmark]

Also after having thought about it a bit more, I think this method is either badly named or is being utilized for more than it should. From the description of this PR:

Please keep in mind that by extension, if you register a function in this method, this function will also be used for inserts only if no .default() or .$default() were registered.

At this point this method is no longer "on update" but also "on insert" in special cases. But .default() already covers that, so why is this method also doing the same? What if I only want it "on update", there seems to be now way at this time (unless I can also add an "empty" .default() in the same chain, but does that not make this API a bit too complex and error prone?).

And okay, if it is for both, then it should be named accordingly because the current name is very explicit "onUpdate", but it's not "just" on update.

Either that, or I misunderstood the description/docs (I did not have a chance to test this out yet - mainly because this method seem to be really worth using for +90% use cases I have).

[AlexBlokh]

@houmark seems like we should have $default, $onUpdate and $onUpsert

[houmark]

That could be one option yes, and I like that idea as it covers every use case with no overlap, but $onUpdate should not be doing any insert related stuff under any circumstances imho. If people want to do that, then either use both functions or the upsert one.

For me it's still way more limiting that the things mentioned in my first comments are not possible. This forces me to do JS logic stuff on every update prior to updating and that can become annoying if you have many of those in different places but you want 1-2 fields to always end up with a specific value - for example a hash based on other field values or something similar.

[tposch]

$onUpdate(() => new Date()) is using the application server's time - not the database time (i.e. current_timestamp). I really need this value to be the database time as we have multiple application servers and we don't necessarily validate their times.

I tried $onUpdate(() => sql`now()`) and a few other variants but always got the same error:

TypeError: value.toISOString is not a function

If anyone has figured out how to use $onUpdate() with current_timestamp, I'd love to hear how.

EDIT: If you set the timestamp mode: 'string' then it works:

    updatedAt: timestamp('updated_at', { withTimezone: true, mode: 'string' })
      .notNull()
      .defaultNow()
      .$onUpdate(() => sql`current_timestamp`),

[tanishqmanuja]

IDK why but its not working for me,

drizzle-orm: 0.33.0
drizzle-kit: 0.24.2

Can someone suggest a workaround ?

[AlexBlokh]

@tanishqmanuja .$onUpdate is a runtime function, it's not related to schema generation, it gets invoked in runtime by query builder

it works and works as expected, I don't see a reason for you to use it here

[tanishqmanuja]

Ah got it, thanks @AlexBlokh. But its weird that drizzle-kit studio doesn't trigger these $onUpdate functions.

drizzle-studio-onupdate.mp4

[AlexBlokh]

I'm not sure we've implemented that yet, please created that as a separate issue, we'll gladly fix!

[tanishqmanuja]

I don't see a reason for you to use it here,

What should be used here ?