Temporarily disable auto_now / auto_now_add

I’ve recently faced this situation while testing my application. I needed to “force” an expired timestamp. In my case, I did the trick by using a queryset update. Like this:

# my model
class FooBar(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=255)
    updated_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True, auto_now_add=True)


# my tests
foo = FooBar.objects.get(pk=1)
    
# force a timestamp
lastweek = datetime.datetime.now() - datetime.timedelta(days=7)
FooBar.objects.filter(pk=foo.pk).update(updated_at=lastweek)

# do the testing.