How to stop Drupal for setting node changed date on creation?

Question

This is my second question about my issues with creating custom migration script.

I am creating only new nodes and don't care about updates.

Code:

        $node = new stdClass();
        $node->type = 'migrate';
        $node->title = $content['title'];
        $node->language = LANGUAGE_NONE;

        $node->created = (int) date('U',strtotime($content['created']));

        $modified = $content['modified'];               
        if (! empty($modified) && $modified != '0000-00-00 00:00:00') {
            $modified = (int) date('U',strtotime($modified));
        } else {
            $modified = 0;
        }               
        $node->changed = $modified;

        node_object_prepare($node);

        #some lines later
        node_save($node);

E.g my $modified is set to 0 and after save I see updated column of this node row in admin content list with current datetime value.

Answer 1

You should be able to preserve the original changed time by first setting a custom property on the node object, say $node->modified, in your migration script prior to calling node_save(), and then implementing the node_presave hook:

/**
 * Implements hook_node_presave().
 */
function mymodule_node_presave($node) {
  $node->changed = $node->modified;
}

This will work since node_save() sets $node->changed prior to calling all modules which implement hook_node_presave().