6.3. Posting Date
The posting date of the entry file is the modification time (also known as mtime) on the file itself as stored by your file system. Every time you go to edit an entry, it changes the modification time. You can see this in the following example of output:
willg ~/blogdata/blosxom/site: vi testpost.txt [1] willg ~/blogdata/blosxom/site: ls -l total 16 -rw-r--r-- 1 willg willg 764 Jul 20 2003 minoradjustments.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 willg willg 524 Jul 24 2003 moreminoradjustments.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 willg willg 284 Aug 15 2004 nomorecalendar.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 willg willg 59 Mar 21 16:30 testpost.txt [2] willg ~/blogdata/blosxom/site: vi testpost.txt [3] willg ~/blogdata/blosxom/site: ls -l total 16 -rw-r--r-- 1 willg willg 764 Jul 20 2003 minoradjustments.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 willg willg 524 Jul 24 2003 moreminoradjustments.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 willg willg 284 Aug 15 2004 nomorecalendar.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 willg willg 59 Mar 21 16:34 testpost.txt [4]
[1] I create the blog entry testpost.txt using vi (a text editor). The mtime of the file will be the time I last save the file and exit out of vi.
[2] See the mtime on the file is Mar 21 16:30. That's when I last saved the blog entry and exited out of vi.
[3] I discover that I made a spelling mistake in my entry... So I edit it again in vi and fix the mistake. The mtime of the entry has now changed...
[4] Now the mtime of the file is Mar 21 16:34. This is the time that will show up in my blog as the posting date.
 | be careful with the mtimes |
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There are some issues with this method for storing the posting date. First, if you ever change the blog entry, the mtime will change as well. That makes updating blog entries very difficult down the line. There's a utility that comes with the contributed plugins pack called editfile.py. This will note the mtime of the file, open up your favorite editor to edit the file, and when you're done, it'll reset the mtime of the file back to what it was. |