Help with My_Model and extending it?

Hi,

Been playing around with Jamie rumbelow's My_Model and find it really useful so far.

Just working with the 'observers' before_create and before_update. I've only been testing these observers with one model so far.

In that model I've got the following code:

PHP Code:

public $before_update = array( 'timestamps_for_update' );
 public $before_create = array( 'timestamps_for_create' );
 
    protected function timestamps_for_update($data)
    {
 $data['updated_at'] = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');
 $data['updated_by'] = $this->session->userdata('username'); 
 return $data;
    } 
     
    protected function timestamps_for_create($data)
    {
 $data['created_at'] = $data['updated_at'] = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');
 $data['created_by'] = $data['updated_by'] = $this->session->userdata('username'); 
 return $data;
    } 


Now, if I want to extend this functionality to all models in my app I don't want to write this code in every one ... so what's the best way tp proceed with this - use a 'Base' model to extend MY_Model and put the code in there and then extend all models from that?

Or is there another, better way?