# What is the updated\_at field?

**URL:** <https://forums.plex.tv/t/what-is-the-updated_at-field/222001>\
**Category:** General Discussions\
**Created:** [January 18, 2018, 7:36am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/what-is-the-updated_at-field/222001 "2018-01-18T07:36:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![shawnl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@shawnl](https://forums.plex.tv/u/shawnl)\
**Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 7:36am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/what-is-the-updated_at-field/222001/1 "2018-01-18T07:36:20Z")

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Has anyone figured out what this field designates? Or rather, what info it’s recording and how it’s derived?  
It’s a field in ten database tables and by name would appear to be for a time stamp, but its datatype is INTEGER(8). This isn’t large enough to record an epoch timestamp, so it’s not that.  
There’s some sort of sequencing, but the increment is not regular.  
There’s an index created for the field on every table with the field. It’s also NOT NULL (which makes sense given the existence of the index).

Basically, I want to add a record to the `play_queue_generators` table and need to know what `updated_at` means and how that number is being generated.

Example:  
sqlite\> select id,metadata\_item\_id,changed\_at from play\_queue\_generators;  
id,metadata\_item\_id,changed\_at  
4,112  
5,1423  
6,6,3170  
7,7,17343  
8,8,17345  
9,17350  
10,41,17359  
11,20,17366  
12,38,17369  
13,40,17371  
14,65,17373  
16,59,17381  
17,6,17383

Thanks!

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**Author:** ![shawnl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@shawnl](https://forums.plex.tv/u/shawnl)\
**Post date:** [January 19, 2018, 3:45pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/what-is-the-updated_at-field/222001/2 "2018-01-19T15:45:58Z")

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Bumpity bump. Anyone have any info on this?

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**Author:** ![9\_Mad-Max\_5](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/9/ce73a5/32.png) [@9\_Mad-Max\_5](https://forums.plex.tv/u/9_Mad-Max_5)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2018, 9:47am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/what-is-the-updated_at-field/222001/3 "2018-05-22T09:47:33Z")

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Do you mean the “changed\_at” field?  
I think its a time stamp.  
But I am pretty not sure how it works.

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**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/plex/original/3X/2/a/2acb9765406f63293d357b4ec509ec39aa28f2ad.png) [@system](https://forums.plex.tv/u/system)\
**Post date:** [January 8, 2020, 12:28am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/what-is-the-updated_at-field/222001/4 "2020-01-08T00:28:20Z")

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