Content Dates

Setting a Content Date in Front Matter

Add a date key to your front matter to override the default date (file creation) and customize how the file is sorted in a collection.

---
date: 2016-01-01
---

---
date: Last Modified
---

Valid date values:

• Last Modified: automatically resolves to the file’s last modified date
• Created: automatically resolves to the file’s created date (default, this is what is used when date is omitted).
• git Last Modified: Added in v1.0.1 automatically resolves to the file’s latest git commit. If a file is not yet checked in to git, it assigns Date.now() to page.date instead.
  • This one is a bit resource intensive, so you may want to limit this to your CI server environment only using JavaScript data files and Environment Variables. Check out this real-world directory data file.
• git Created: Added in v2.0.0 automatically resolves to the file’s first git commit. It uses git's --follow flag to make a "best effort" renaming tracking. If a file is not yet checked in to git, it assigns Date.now() to page.date instead.
  • This one is a bit resource intensive, so you may want to limit this to your CI server environment only using JavaScript data files and Environment Variables. Check out this real-world directory data file.
• 2016-01-01 or any other valid YAML date value (leaving off the time assumes midnight in UTC, or 00:00:00Z)
• "2016-01-01" or any other valid ISO 8601 string that Luxon’s DateTime.fromISO can parse (see also the Luxon API docs).

If a date key is omitted from the file, we then look for a YYYY-MM-DD format anywhere in the file path (even folders). If there are multiple dates found, the first is used. ℹ️ Note that starting in 1.0 for consistency with front matter formats file name date formats are now assumed to be UTC.

As a last resort, the file creation date is used. Careful when relying on file creation dates on a deployment server.

Dates off by one day?

You’re probably displaying UTC dates in a local time zone.

Many date formats in Eleventy (when set in your content‘s filename as YYYY-MM-DD-myfile.md or in your front matter as date: YYYY-MM-DD) assume midnight in UTC. When displaying your dates, make sure you’re using the UTC time and not your own local time zone, which may be the default.

Example

---
date: 2018-01-01
---

If you output the Date object in a template, it will convert it to a string for display:

Using {{ page.date }} will display a date using a local time zone like:

Sun Dec 31 2017 18:00:00 GMT-0600 (Central Standard Time)

Note that this appears to be the wrong day!

Nunjucks allows you to call JavaScript methods in output {{ page.date.toString() }}. Liquid does not allow this.

But {{ page.date.toUTCString() }} will correctly
display a date with a UTC time zone like:

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT

You could add your own toUTCString filter in Liquid to perform the same task.

Also on YouTube

Collections out of order when you run Eleventy on your Server?

Be careful relying on the default date associated with a piece of content. By default Eleventy uses file creation dates, which works fine if you run Eleventy locally but may reset in some conditions if you run Eleventy on a Continuous Integration server. Work around this by using explicit date assignments, either in your front matter or your content’s file name. Read more at Setting a Content Date in Front Matter.

From the Community

×46 resources courtesy of 11tybundle.dev curated by Bob Monsour

• July Project Updates — Chris Burnell (2024)
• A custom collection to sort events with Eleventy — Sami Määttä (2024)
• Added Timestamp to Posts — John M. Wargo (2024)
• Added Timestamp to My Eleventy New Post Utility — John M. Wargo (2024)
• We Need to Talk About Your Eleventy Post Dates — Robb Knight (2024)

Other pages in Working with Templates:

• Add CSS, JS, Fonts
• Quick Tips
• Layouts
  • Layout Chaining
• Collections
• Create Pages From Data
• Pagination
  • Pagination Navigation
• Content Dates
• Permalinks
• Internationalization (i18n)
• Common Pitfalls