@nuxt/content: How to Keep createdAt and updatedAt Valid After Cloning

I recently tried out @nuxt/content, a Git-based CMS for Nuxt projects. And I really like it! It allows me to write markdown files and host them right in my existing project.

One thing I noticed when deploying the project to my server was that the createdAt and updatedAt fields were always reset and didn't reflect the actual dates. The reason for this is that Git does not keep file metadata. This means that the timestamps that @nuxt/content relies on are of no use.

Git to the rescue!

One way to fix this is not to use the file stats, but instead use the Git history for this. Special thanks to Andrew Kreuzer for the initial idea. We check the history for each file and take the earliest commit date as createdAt and the latest as updatedAt.

Requirement for this is that Git is installed on the build system and that the history is actually checked out. There will be problems if a shallow clone is made on CI, in this case the cloning has to be configured accordingly.

Using the nuxt-content-git module to make things easy

I created the Nuxt module nuxt-content-git to make the setup plug-and-play. You probably do not want to reinvent the wheel in each project.

Install the module with npm install nuxt-content-git and add it to your nuxt.config.js like this:

export default {
  modules: [
    'nuxt-content-git',
    '@nuxt/content',
  ],
}

Note that it is important to add it before @nuxt/content, so @nuxt/content knows about the hooks that our helper module installs.

Conclusion

That was basically it! The rest works behind the scenes. Your dates should be up to date 😊.

Let me know if you like this module and leave a star at GitHub 🌟.

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