MonitorField with 'when' inits to now?

[gracebrownecodes]

In my use-case, I have a StatusField with three options and two MonitorFields that use 'when' to watch for a specific status. See abbreviated model below.

When I initialize a new object, it appears that both active_date and deprecated_date are set to the current time. Is this the intended behavior? It would make more sense to me if these MonitorFields were left Null...

class Element(models.Model):
    STATUS = Choices('draft', 'active', 'deprecated')
    status = StatusField()
    created_date = models.DateTimeField('Element creation date', auto_now_add=True, null=False, editable=True)
    active_date = MonitorField('Element active date', monitor='status', when=['active'], null=True)
    deprecated_date = MonitorField('Element deprecation date', monitor='status', when=['deprecated'], null=True)

[carljm]

Yes, it appears that MonitorField gets a default of now if no other default is given. I think you could easily override this by explicitly providing default=None, but I also would be happy to accept a pull request (with test) that changes the behavior so that if the field is nullable None is the default default.

[gracebrownecodes]

You're absolutely right, the default=None flag gave the behavior I was looking for. I think my time is better spent trying to remember things like this than submitting a pull request, but thanks for being accepting! And thanks for your speedy and accurate response!

[carljm]

Great, thanks for the report! I'm going to reopen this because I do think it would be better if MonitorField didn't default to now when nullable. I'm not likely to work on it, but an open ticket communicates more clearly that this change would be welcome if someone gets around to it.

[gracebrownecodes]

OK, if I happen upon some time I will definitely come back and contribute, as I am enjoying the package.

[iambibhas]

@carljm something like this would work? iambibhas@a142f24