15 December 2009, 12:17

Hello All,

We have some controlled groups which are being used for assessment and have a deadline.

I am looking at ways to report on whether the deadline is met, something Mahara itself does not seem to handle yet.

It looks like I will be able to do this with:

SELECT * FROM `mah_view` WHERE submittedto IS NOT NULL

However, I am just wondering what the three time fields are within that table:

• ctime
• mtime 
• atime

Could anyone help me out with that please?

Thanks, Jez

17 December 2009, 21:21

Hi Jez,

Those are the view creation time, last modified time, and last access time.  I don't believe we actually update atime, because it would require an extra db write every time a view is viewed.  Unfortunately we aren't storing the time that a view gets submitted, but we should, it would be useful information to keep.

It's possible that for a submitted view, mtime would tell you the submitted time, because users can't edit views they've submitted.  But before relying on that, I'd want to be aware of every process that updates mtime, and I can't tell you that off the top of my head.  Even though the owner can't change the view, mtime might get updated by cron jobs, by the teacher marking the view, by the site admin, etc., basically anything that calls the commit() method on the view.

R.