Change name of Laravel's created_at and updated_at

Can I map Laravel's timestamps from:

created_at to post_date and post_date_gmt?

updated_at to post_modified and post_modified_gmt?

---

I'm migrating a Wordpress application to Laravel.

I'm accessing a copy of the Wordpress database using Laravel. The live version of the database is still in use so I don't want to change the schema.

The Posts table has post_date, post_date_gmt, post_modified and post_modified_gmt, but Laravel is expecting created_at and updated_at.

Is there anyway to change the column names that Laravel looks for?

I'd like Laravel to update the timestamps of all the columns that are already there.

The accepted answer may cause problems with updating timestamps unfortunately.

You'd better override consts on your model:

const CREATED_AT = 'post_date';
const UPDATED_AT = 'post_modified';

then methods getCreatedAtColumn and getUpdatedAtColumn will return post_date and post_modified respectively, but won't do any harm.

For the other columns you need use events like @Oni suggested.

If you look into the source of the Eloquent class

https://github.com/illuminate/database/blob/4.2/Eloquent/Model.php#L223-L235

You should be able to change these column names pretty easily by overriding those constants.

<?php

class YourModel extends Eloquent {

    /**
     * The name of the "created at" column.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    const CREATED_AT = 'post_date';

    /**
     * The name of the "updated at" column.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    const UPDATED_AT = 'post_modified';

}

As for the _gmt version of those timestamps, you might want to look into events. Here is a good start

http://driesvints.com/blog/using-laravel-4-model-events

Just put this in your tables model file,

 const CREATED_AT = 'your_custom_created_at_field_name';
 const UPDATED_AT = 'your_custom_updated_at_field_name';

My model looks like this for avoiding confusions

class diarymodule extends Model
{
    protected $table = 'diarymodule';
    const CREATED_AT = 'CreatedDate';
    const UPDATED_AT = 'UpdatedDate';
}

You could try using the attribute getters and getters:

class Post extends Eloquent
{
    public function getCreatedAtAttribute()
    {
        return $this->attributes['post_date'];
    }

    public function setCreatedAtAttribute($value)
    {
        $this->attributes['post_date'] = $value;

        // this may not work, depends if it's a Carbon instance, and may also break the above - you may have to clone the instance
        $this->attributes['post_date_gmt'] = $value->setTimezone('UTC');
    }
}

I don't know if this will work, but you could give it a go. Certainly a base to go on maybe - you'll have to play around with it.