How to show the modification date of a file in Jekyll?

Question

I know that I can specify a variable date in the YAML frontmatter of a file and access its value with {{ page.date }}. This is cumbersome since one easily forgets to change the date when a file is updated. So how can I access a file's modification date?

Answer 1

This is a relatively new plugin that does what you're looking for:

https://github.com/gjtorikian/jekyll-last-modified-at

(found it while searching Google for alternatives to the other answers in this thread)

Answer 2

From Jekyll 1.x there is a page.path that gives you the filename of the post or page being currently processed. Add the following filter (place e.g. in _plugins/myfilters.rb) to get the modification time of a given filename:

module Jekyll   module MyFilters     def file_date(input)       File.mtime(input)     end   end end  Liquid::Template.register_filter(Jekyll::MyFilters) 

So now you can render the date on your posts and pages, e.g., as

{{ page.path | file_date | date_to_string }}