I tried this but doesn't work because NEW.updated is never NULL (I suppose NEW gets populated by the values currently in the row in addition to the values in the update-statement?):

create temp table test (
    created  TIMESTAMPTZ NOT NULL DEFAULT now(),
    updated  TIMESTAMPTZ NOT NULL DEFAULT now()
);

CREATE FUNCTION update_timestamp() RETURNS TRIGGER AS
$$
BEGIN
    IF NEW.updated IS NOT NULL THEN
        NEW.updated := now();
    END IF;
    RETURN NEW;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

CREATE TRIGGER asdf BEFORE UPDATE ON test
FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE update_timestamp();

How can I make it set NEW.updated := now(); only when updated is not explicitly set in an update-statement? So that the trigger doesn't overwrite me when I want to set the updated column manually.

I tried this but doesn't work because NEW.updated is never NULL (I suppose NEW gets populated by the values currently in the row in addition to the values in the update-statement?):

create temp table test (
    created  TIMESTAMPTZ NOT NULL DEFAULT now(),
    updated  TIMESTAMPTZ NOT NULL DEFAULT now()
);

CREATE FUNCTION update_timestamp() RETURNS TRIGGER AS
$$
BEGIN
    IF NEW.updated IS NOT NULL THEN
        NEW.updated := now();
    END IF;
    RETURN NEW;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

CREATE TRIGGER asdf BEFORE UPDATE ON test
FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE update_timestamp();

How can I make it set NEW.updated := now(); only when updated is not explicitly set in an update-statement? So that the trigger doesn't overwrite me when I want to set the updated column manually (eg. updated=updated).