h3. Test for whether or not a Row object isNew I have run into a few situations where I needed to know whether or now the Row object passed already existed in the database. I think the following "isNew" method would be helpful in determining if a Row object is new or a reference to an existing row in the database:

public function setTimestamp(Zend_Db_Table_Row_Abstract $row)
{
    if ($row->isNew()) {
        $row->created = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');
    }
    $row->updated = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');    
}

\

h3. Getting a Row Object's Modified Data This also comes out of a use-case scenario where I required an email to be sent when the status of a row table.status was modified. This check was OUTSIDE of the row object so I didn't have direct access to whether or not $Row->status has changed:

$modifiedData = $Row->getModifiedData();
if (in_array('status', $modifiedData)) {
    // Send email with the new status
}

\

h3. Code for the examples above

abstract class Zend_Db_Table_Row_Abstract
{
    /**
     * Returns true if the row is new (no clean/db data)
     *
     * @return bool
     */
    public function isNew()
    {
        return empty($this->_cleanData);
    }

    /**
     * Returns the diff of the data from the cleanData.
     *
     * @return array
     */
    public function getModifiedData()
    {
        return array_diff_assoc($this->_data, $this->_cleanData);
    }
}