In django do models have a default timestamp field?

No such thing by default, but adding one is super-easy. Just use the auto_now_add parameter in the DateTimeField class:

created = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)

You can also use auto_now for an 'updated on' field. Check the behavior of auto_now here.

For auto_now_add here.

A model with both fields will look like this:

class MyModel(models.Model):
    created_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    updated_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)

Automagically doesn't sound like something django would do by default. It wouldn't force you to require a timestamp.

I'd build an abstract base class and inherit all models from it if you don't want to forget about the timestamp / fieldname, etc.

class TimeStampedModel(models.Model):
     created_on = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)

     class Meta:
         abstract = True

It doesn't seem like much to import wherever.TimeStampedModel instead of django.db.models.Model

class MyFutureModels(TimeStampedModel):
    ....

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