Configure front matter

Dates

There are four methods on a Page object that return a date.

Method	Description
Date	Returns the date of the given page.
ExpiryDate	Returns the expiry date of the given page.
Lastmod	Returns the last modification date of the given page.
PublishDate	Returns the publish date of the given page.

Hugo determines the values to return based on this configuration:

{{< code-toggle config=frontmatter />}}

The ExpiryDate method, for example, returns the expirydate value if it exists, otherwise it returns unpublishdate.

You can also use custom date parameters:

{{< code-toggle file=hugo >}} [frontmatter] date = ["myDate", "date"] {{< /code-toggle >}}

In the example above, the Date method returns the myDate value if it exists, otherwise it returns date.

To fall back to the default sequence of dates, use the :default token:

{{< code-toggle file=hugo >}} [frontmatter] date = ["myDate", ":default"] {{< /code-toggle >}}

In the example above, the Date method returns the myDate value if it exists, otherwise it returns the first valid date from date, publishdate, pubdate, published, lastmod, and modified.

Aliases

Some of the front matter fields have aliases.

Front matter field	Aliases
expiryDate	unpublishdate
lastmod	modified
publishDate	pubdate, published

The default front matter configuration includes these aliases.

Tokens

Hugo provides the following tokens to help you configure your front matter:

:default : The default ordered sequence of date fields.

:fileModTime : The file's last modification timestamp.

:filename : Extracts the date from the file name, provided the file name begins with a date in one of the following formats:

• YYYY-MM-DD
• YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM-SS {{< new-in 0.148.0 />}}

Within the YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM-SS format, the date and time values may be separated by any character including a space (e.g., 2025-02-01T14-30-00).

Hugo resolves the extracted date to the timeZone defined in your project configuration, falling back to the system time zone. After extracting the date, Hugo uses the remaining part of the file name to generate the page's slug, but only if you haven't already specified a slug in the page's front matter.

For example, if you name your file 2025-02-01-article.md, Hugo will set the date to 2025-02-01 and the slug to article.

:git : The Git author date for the file's last revision. To enable access to the Git author date, set enableGitInfo to true.

Example

Consider this project configuration:

{{< code-toggle file=hugo >}} [frontmatter] date = [':filename', ':default'] publishDate = [':filename', ':default'] lastmod = ['lastmod', ':fileModTime'] {{< /code-toggle >}}

To determine date and publishDate, Hugo tries to extract the value from the file name, falling back to the default ordered sequence of date fields.

To determine lastmod, Hugo looks for a lastmod field in front matter, falling back to the file's last modification timestamp.