Adding a “last updated” date to posts

I often find myself updating posts I’ve previously published. Usually this happens when I re-read what I’ve written and think of a better way to say it. Or when I discover more about the subject and I feel a supplement is relevant. Sometimes it’s when my process changes, which typically outdates the post, compared to the way I’m currently doing things.

Whatever the case, these updates happen frequently. They keep the content on my personal site somewhat evergreen, which I like and feel is important. But it‘s not always clear to readers when content has changed.

To solve this, I’d eventually like to add some form of footnotes to document the exact changes. But as an interim solution, I’m adding a date to these posts (or pages) which specifies when the content was updated. You’ll find this “updated” date just beneath the published date on certain pages on my site, such as on my app defaults post.

If you also build your site using Hugo, then adding this fuctionality is straight forward to automate. In this post I’ll explain how it works.

Understanding .PublishDate and .Lastmod #

Getting a “Last updated” date set up on your pages requires two Hugo page methods – PublishDate and Lastmod.

.PublishDate returns the publish date of your content, whereas .Lastmod returns the date a page was last modified.

Consider the following code found in my single.html template.

{{ $published := .PublishDate | time.Format ":date_medium" }}
{{ $updated := .Lastmod | time.Format ":date_medium" }}

First, we grab the published date and assign it to a variable, in this case the variable is called $published. Then, we use the Lastmod method to grab the date the page was last modified. Again, the value is stored in a variable, this time called $updated.

It’s important to note, by default, Hugo will look for a value for both publishDate and lastmod set in the front matter of a page:

---
title: A new post
publishDate: 2024-02-01T00:40:04-07:00
lastmod: 2024-02-05T00:40:04-07:00
---

Some post content.

This may be convenient depending on your needs, but personally I’d rather automate this step, if I can. That way I don’t have to remember to manually change the lastmod value in the front matter, every time I update a page.

Assuming you’re using Git to manage your project and your code is stored in a repository – Github or similar – then this is a simple problem to solve.

With the following added to your hugo.toml config file, you can forget about adding lastmod values to your front matter altogether.

enableGitInfo = true

Now your lastmod date will derive from the last git commit of a given page. See the Gitinfo method for more details.

Comparing .PublishDate and .Lastmod #

The final step in getting this working is to compare publishDate with lastmod. Then return the date the page was last modified (when the last commit was made), should the two values differ.

Let’s head back to our single.html file, for an example:

{{ $published := .PublishDate | time.Format ":date_medium" }}
{{ $modified := .Lastmod | time.Format ":date_medium" }}

{{ if ne $published $modified }}
  <span> Updated: {{ $modified }} </span>
{{ end }}

Notice we’re using the if function and the ne comparison operator, to check whether the two values are “not equal to” each other. if returns a boolean value (true or false), so if this statement holds true, then we return the value of $modified, in other words, our last modified date.

Formatting time to the day, not the second #

Notice both date and lastmod consist of time values, which, when generated, will return values to the nearest second, by default.

Here’s that example content file once again.

---
title: A new post
publishDate: 2024-02-01T00:40:04-07:00
lastmod: 2024-02-05T00:40:04-07:00
---

Some post content.

Therefore, it’s important to format dates to the day, rather than second. Doing so will ensure the comparison is between days “not equal to“ each other, rather than seconds “not equal to“ each other. That way, the if condition won’t always return true when comparing that the two values do not match.

We can achieve this by using the time.format method as a pipe, so we get consistent dates, to the day.

Let’s consider those variables once again:

{{ $published := .PublishDate | time.Format ":date_medium" }}
{{ $modified := .Lastmod | time.Format ":date_medium" }}

Using :date_medium returns something like: Jan 27, 2023, which is what we’re looking for.

Now our if statement is checking that the day differs, rather than the seconds – exactly what we want. As a result, the “last updated” date will only show on content updated days later than the publish date, rather than seconds later.

Summary #

It’s worth mentioning, whilst I’ve used publishDate in the context of the examples in this post, you could quite easily compare lastmod with the value of date, using the Date method instead.

In other words, this works just as well:

---
title: A new post
date: 2024-02-01T00:40:04-07:00
lastmod: 2024-02-05T00:40:04-07:00
---

Some post content.

With you front matter using a date, as above, your template might look like this:

{{ $published := .Date | time.Format ":date_medium" }}
{{ $modified := .Lastmod | time.Format ":date_medium" }}

{{ if ne $published $modified }}
	<span> Updated: {{ $modified }} </span>
{{ end }}

Ok, that’s all for this one.