Get the date/time that Sitecore last published

Question

Simple question, I think: is there a value, either in the API or the Web database, that will tell me the last time content was published using sitecore? It looks like there's an "Updated" column in the "Items" table that might do this, but I'd like to be sure. I don't need to know individual items, just the last time any content was published.

Answer 1

Iff (that's if and only if) the publish is a full site publish or an incremental publish, Sitecore will record that date to the database, and it can be retrieved from the master DB using

Database.Properties.GetLastPublishDate(Database target, Language language)

Otherwise, if you want the date for any publish, you're probably going to need to create a publish pipeline processor to record that date somewhere.