[jifty-devel] Database setup question

[Bort, Paul]

I'm building an on-line testing application (testing people, not
software) and I can't figure out how to specify a function as a default
when defining a column. (I'm using PostgreSQL.)

The column contains a timestamp, and I'd like it to default to the time
the record was inserted. This is no problem in PG: 

CREATE TABLE foo ( bar timestamp default now() );

And the time of the insert will be used as the default. But if there are
quotes around the function, like this:

CREATE TABLE foo ( bar timestamp default 'now()' );

Then the default is set as the time the TABLE was created. Not so
helpful.

The column definition in the model is currently as follows:

column created_on =>
    label is 'Date this test was created',
    type is 'timestamp',
    default is 'now()';

And Jifty dutifully quotes the default when constructing the CREATE
TABLE statement.

As expected, if I leave the quotes off in the column definition, Perl
goes looking for a function named 'now', so that's out.

Any ideas? Undocumented magic quote control? I'd rather not have to
change the schema outside Jifty if possible.

Regards,
Paul