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Drupal 6. Using Rules and CCK

So, I have a content type that gets automatically generated with Rules. Several CCK fields get populated at creation time, including a datetime field. I want this field to get populated with the current date/time.

For some reason, the Global Token fields don't work, the interface throws an error when I try to use a token instead of a standard formatted date/time stamp.

So, I use advanced PHP code box to set the date/time value.

return array( 0 => array('value' => date("m/d/Y - H:i")), );

This code works, but when I do it this way it seems that whenever I refresh the node page the date/time stamp in the field is updated to whatever the current time is. This is not the behavior I want. I want the date/time to get inserted at creation time, and have it remain unchanged for perpetuity.

Thoughts?

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    Just a thought...why not use $node->created instead of having a custom field with identical data? – Clive♦ Jul 3 '12 at 17:13
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    Yeah fair point. I can't think of any good reason why a node creation rule would be run on a node view though, it doesn't really make sense. – Clive♦ Jul 3 '12 at 17:39
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    I can't say for sure (I've never actually used them) but that sounds very much like what's happening – Clive♦ Jul 3 '12 at 18:17
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    Hmm. Could it be a db issue? Has the column somehow been created as a MySQL timestamp (which updates when the record is accessed)? – Clive♦ Jul 3 '12 at 18:27
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    No worries, glad you got it sorted – Clive♦ Jul 3 '12 at 19:17
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Thanks to Clive's help, I determined the problem was with the field type. There were several similar seeming Date/Time field types available to use, I was using one called "datetime". I switched to another one called "datestamp" and the datestamp field retained its original value after refreshing. I guess the "datetime" field is designed to always return the current datetime value of now(). Thanks for helping me work through this friend!

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