Git Times

When writing a content rich site a common requirement is to show when some content was published and when it was last updated. Instead of tracking this manually for each entry in your content collections, this library allows you to retrieve those dates from your Git history.

Git is only necessary during build, so you can deploy your site anywhere. Even on platforms that don’t provide Git, access to binaries or native modules (yes, even on Cloudflare).

How to use

1. Install @inox-tools/content-utils:

   npm

   npx astro add @inox-tools/content-utils

   yarn

   yarn astro add @inox-tools/content-utils

   pnpm

   pnpm astro add @inox-tools/content-utils

2. Import the time getter you want from @it-astro:content/git:

   src/pages/blog/[...slug].astro

   ---
   import { getLatestCommitDate, getOldestCommitDate } from '@it-astro:content/git';
   ---

3. Get the time from any collection entry using the same signature as Astro’s getEntry:

   src/pages/blog/[...slug].astro

   ---
   import { getOldestCommitDate } from '@it-astro:content/git';
   
   const { slug } = Astro.params;
   
   const entry = await getEntry('blog', slug);
   const creationDate = await getOldestCommitDate('blog', slug);
   // OR
   const creationDate = await getOldestCommitDate(entry);
   ---

API

getLatestCommitDate

Returns the commit time of the last commit that changed the selected entry.
If the entry has not been commited yet, this function returns the current time.

getOldestCommitDate

Returns the commit time of the first commit that created the selected entry.
If the entry has not been commited yet, this function returns the current time.

Hooks

Integrations can hook into the lifecycle of the content collections git times, this allows you to:

• Ignore some collection entries;
• Override times for entries.

@it/content:git:listed

This hook is called on astro build once the collection entries tracked by Git are listed.

your-integration/index.ts

import { defineIntegration } from 'astro-integration-kit';
import '@inox-tools/content-utils';

export default defineIntegration({
  name: 'your-integration',
  setup() {
    return {
      hooks: {
        '@it/content:git:listed': ({ trackedFiles, ignoreFiles, logger }) => {
          // your code
        },
      },
    };
  },
});

trackedFiles

Type: string[]

List of all content collection entry files that are tracked by Git. The values are in

ignoreFiles

Type: (files: string[]) => void

A callback to exclude files from tracking. Values that is not on trackedFiles are ignored.

logger

Type: AstroIntegrationLogger

A standard AstroIntegrationLogger, configured the same as for the official Astro hooks.

@it/content:git:resolved

This hook is called twice for each tracked content collection entry, once for each git time that is resolved (oldest and latest).

your-integration/index.ts

import { defineIntegration } from 'astro-integration-kit';
import '@inox-tools/content-utils';

export default defineIntegration({
  name: 'your-integration',
  setup() {
    return {
      hooks: {
        '@it/content:git:resolved': ({ age, file, resolvedDate, overrideDate, logger }) => {
          // your code
        },
      },
    };
  },
});

age

Type: 'oldest' | 'latest'

Which age of the entry is being resolved, oldest, latest.

file

Type: string

Absolute path to the content collection entry file.

resolvedDate

Type: Date

Date resolved from the Git history.

overrideDate

Type: (newDate: Date) => void

Callback function to override the resolved date.