hexo-cactus-post-last-updated

Hexo plugin to show last updated date in your cactus theme posts.

Limitations

• Might work for other themes as well but it was tested with cactus theme only.
• Expects that posts names are unique and never changed in posts directory (in cactus theme this directory is /source/_posts, you can change dir path in /node_modules/hexo-cactus-post-last-updated/index.js file if you have a different path).

How To Use?

npm i hexo-cactus-post-last-updated

How It Works?

When you will run plugin for the first time it will generate a data folder in root theme directory with other dirs such as /source, /scaffolds etc. The data dir will have 2 files

• data.json
• initialLengths.json

Notable file here is data.json file, it consists of the following information about each post

• "filename", post file name
• "filePostTitle", post title
• "fileContentInitialLength", the length of content first recorder when plugin queried your posts for the first time, it will be a constant value
• "fileContentUpdatedLength", the length of content updated each time when you make any changes in your posts, it will be a variable value
• "fileContentDateUpdated", date saved when a change is detected in "fileContentUpdatedLength" in yy:mm:dd format

Tip: Since data folder is serving as a database to save last updated dates of your posts so its better to take a regular backup of this folder.

Setup Plugin

In order to use this plugin you will need to create 2 files in your theme last_updated.js and date_updated.ejs.

last_updated.js create this file /themes/cactus/scripts/

'use strict';

const fs = require('fs');
const path = require('path');

hexo.extend.helper.register('last_updated', function (post) {
  // post is post title coming from date_updated.ejs
  const dataPath = path.join(hexo.base_dir, 'data', 'data.json');
  const data = JSON.parse(fs.readFileSync(dataPath));

  let lastUpdatedDate;
  data.map((el) => {
    if (el.filePostTitle == post) {
      lastUpdatedDate = el.fileContentDateUpdated;
    }
  });

  return lastUpdatedDate;
});

This script will query data.json in data dir and return last updated date (if any) for a post.

To show this date in your frontend you will need to create another file

date_updated.ejs in /themes/cactus/layout/_partial/post/

<% if (post.title) { %>
  <% const updatedDate=last_updated(post.title) %>
  <% if (updatedDate) { %>
    <span><span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>Last Updated:
      <time>
        <%= updatedDate %>
      </time>
    </span>
  <% } %>
<% } %>

This ejs script will show the return date from last_updated.js.

Final step is to include date_updated.ejs in /themes/cactus/layout/post.ejs file,

look for

<%- partial('_partial/post/date', { post: page, class_name: 'postdate' }) %>

line in post.ejs file and right below this line add

<%- partial('_partial/post/date_updated', { post: page, class_name: 'postdate' }) %>

Now run hexo server command and you can see last updated date on your posts right after the published date.

Notes

Suggestions and contributions are always welcomed, I request you to please help me improve this plugin and contribute to this repo. If faced any malfunctioning, please open issues. Happy Coding!