How to bypass the auto_now property option during an ndb put

In App Engine the auto_now option sets a property to the current date/time whenever the entity is created or updated. This is a great feature for tracking the time when an entity was last updated. However, sometimes you may want to put an entity without updating an auto_now timestamp. This article will show you how.

First, let’s start with a very basic ndb model with an updated property having the auto_now option set to True.

from google.appengine.ext import ndb

class Article(ndb.model):
    title = ndb.model.StringProperty()
    updated = ndb.model.DateTimeProperty(auto_now=True)

Now, let’s put the entity to the datastore without updating the timestamp and completely bypassing the auto_now option.

article = Article(title='Python versus Ruby')
article._properties['updated'].auto_now = False
article.put()

It’s pretty simple, but with caveats. Putting the entity using the code above will store the updated entity in the instance cache (and memcache). If we get the entity it will be retrieved from the instance cache with the auto_now property still set to False. This can have unwanted side-effects because subsequent updates to the entity will not trigger the auto_now functionality.

article = Article(title='Python versus Ruby')
article._properties['updated'].auto_now = False
key = article.put() # Put the entity with the auto_now option set to False

article = key.get() # Get the entity from instance cache
article.title = 'Python versus Go'
article.put() # Put the entity with the auto_now option *still* set to False

You can set the auto_now option to True again to re-enable the functionality.

article = Article(title='Python versus Ruby')
article._properties['updated'].auto_now = False
key = article.put()

article._properties['updated'].auto_now = True
article = key.get() # Get the entity from instance cache
article.title = 'Python versus Go'
article.put() # Puts the entity with the auto_now option set to True

For more information on ndb caching refer to the documentation.