Last-modified date be reflective of the latest commit date when publishing with github action

[simosacchi]

Description

Dear all,

I am using Quarto blog to publish this project:
Github repo: https://github.com/EUI-Library/coara-idea-catalogue
Github page: https://eui-library.github.io/coara-idea-catalogue/

I have set up a workflow to rebuild the site upon a new commit/push to the repo. My issue is that I would like to keep for each page the last modified date of the source, but instead I seem to be picking the last rendering date.

I have tried adopting this, but with no success: #5967

Any help would be very much appreciated.

[mcanouil]

I have tried adopting this, but with no success: #5967

Not sure what you meant here. This is a known issue which you already know because you've foudn the issue tracking it.

[simosacchi]

Well, as there was no clear solution to the issue as of May 2024, I wanted to see whether the community had figured out any workarounds in the meantime. I should have commented on the issue directly, I guess. Sorry.

[mcanouil]

You could generate the date in a shared metadata file (_metadata.yml) and not set date-modified at document-level via a pre-render script, but a commit date does not fit "last-modified" either because the commit might not even be for all the files.

[simosacchi]

Practical use case from my project:

• I apply a change to a .qmd file inside /ideas/ (e.g. https://github.com/EUI-Library/coara-idea-catalogue/blob/main/ideas/narrative-cvs/index.qmd)
• The GitHub action to update the site is triggered
• ONLY the page for which the source was updated would get an updated date, not ALL pages (as it happens now)

Currently, I do set the "last-modified" date in a global _metadata.yml file inside the folder /ideas/

Maybe there is a way to trigger the render only for pages that have actually been changed/updated?

Thanks!

[mcanouil]

Maybe there is a way to trigger the render only for pages that have actually been changed/updated?

Yes, but you have to write the script for that. As you use GitHub, you can use Git, the API, etc. to list the modified files, then loop quarto render on them

[simosacchi]

Gotcha, thanks! I'll see if I can find examples.

[mcanouil]

Here from a GitHub Actions workflow of mine:

      - name: Get changed files
        if: ${{ env.NO_LINT == 'false' }}
        shell: bash
        run: |
          git diff --name-only --diff-filter=AM "origin/${GITHUB_BASE_REF}"...HEAD > changed_files.txt
          if grep -iqE "\.(r|rmd|qmd|rnw|rhtml|rrst|rtex|rtxt|rprofile)$" changed_files.txt; then
            echo "NO_LINT=false" >> "${GITHUB_ENV}"
          else
            echo "NO_LINT=true" >> "${GITHUB_ENV}"
          fi

The main part is git diff --name-only --diff-filter=AM "origin/${GITHUB_BASE_REF}"...HEAD > changed_files.txt