Here are a few question-based titles based on your article: * **How Can I Auto-Populate Record Creation Dates in MySQL?** * **What\'s the Best Way to Handle Record Creation Timestamps in MySQL?** * *

Maintaining Record Creation Date in MySQL Automatically

To record the date and time of a record's creation in MySQL automatically, we can leverage the DEFAULT constraint. This constraint allows us to specify a default value that will be assigned to the column if no explicit value is provided during insertion.

Using the CURRENT_TIMESTAMP Default Value

For a newly created table, we can define a column with the DATETIME data type and specify the DEFAULT constraint as CURRENT_TIMESTAMP:

CREATE TABLE your_table (
  ...
  your_date_column DATETIME DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
  ...
);

Modifying an Existing Table

For an existing table, we can update the specified column to use the CURRENT_TIMESTAMP default value using the ALTER TABLE statement:

ALTER TABLE your_table
ALTER COLUMN your_date_column SET DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP;

Behavior of the Default Constraint

The default value defined for the column will only be applied when no explicit value is provided during insertion. If you specify a value for the column in the INSERT statement, that value will override the default. The default constraint also applies when inserting NULL or DEFAULT values, ensuring that the default value will be used in these cases.

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