By default Ecto can generate the time a row was inserted or updated in your database. By default these columns are called:

• inserted_at
• updated_at

Developers coming from Rails might want to use created_at instead of inserted_at. This is easy to do. Lets say you want a table “tests” defined as:

id         | bigint                      | not null default nextval('tests_id_seq'::regclass)
name       | character varying(255)      |
created_at | timestamp without time zone | not null
updated_at | timestamp without time zone | not null

In your migration file you’ll want to use:

def change do
  create table(:tests) do
    add :name, :string

    timestamps(inserted_at: :created_at)
  end
end

So you are passing parameters to the timestamps function to let it know that inserted_at is represented by the field created_at.

Then in your schema file you’ll want to do the same:

schema "tests" do
  field :name, :string

  timestamps(inserted_at: :created_at)
end

That’s it. Everything will work and created_at will be populated when you insert rows with Ecto.