Oracle auto add current date

Question

I want create a table 'product' and have a column date, is it possible that current date will be added when I add some info to table?

If yes please example of this table

create table products (
id number not null,
date number not null
);

Answer 1

Assuming that

1. Your column is not actually named date since that is a reserved word
2. Your column is actually defined as a date rather than as a number
3. You want to populate the column when you insert a new row

you can define a default value for the column.

SQL> ed
Wrote file afiedt.buf

  1  create table products (
  2  id number not null,
  3  dt date   default sysdate not null
  4* )
SQL> /

Table created.

SQL>
SQL> insert into products( id ) values( 1 );

1 row created.

SQL> select * from products;

        ID DT
---------- ---------
         1 20-NOV-12

If you want to modify the dt column when you UPDATE the row, you would need a trigger

CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER trg_products
  BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE ON products
  FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN
  :new.dt := sysdate;
END;

A trigger will override any value passed in as part of the INSERT or UPDATE statement for the dt column. A default value will not.