The default template for an Atom feed in Middleman Blog uses the last modified time of an article’s source file as the article’s last update time. This means that if I build the site on two different machines I will get different last updated times on articles in the two atom feeds. I’d rather the built site look the same regardless of where I build it.

The source code for the site lives in a Git repository which means I have a consistent source for update times that I can rely on. So, I’ve added a helper that asks Git for the last commit time of a file and falls back to its last modified time if the file isn’t currently tracked in Git.

helpers do
 def last_update_time(file)
    Time.parse `git log -1 --format=%cd #{file} 2>/dev/null`
  rescue
    File.mtime(file)
  end
do

I now use this helper in my Atom template for each article.

xml.entry do
  xml.published article.date.to_time.iso8601
  xml.updated last_update_time(article.source_file).iso8601
  xml.content article.body, "type" => "html"
end