laravel/laravel — pull request #1121 by mcintyre94 (2012-08-19 14:24:08+00:00)
Title: Minor/unprotect eloquent timestamps

In most cases the default behavior of timestamp() is perfect - only updating the updated_at field when the model is actually changed. However, I wanted to do logic using this time that would be most useful if an unchanged model could still have its timestamps updated. After posting a thread at 'http://forums.laravel.com/viewtopic.php?id=2021' I found out about the protected timestamp() function in database/eloquent/model.php. This pull request simply makes that public. Any eloquent model's timestamp can then be updated using, for example:

$users->post->timestamp();
$users->post->save();