Set 'date: last-modified' on project level

[allefeld]

Description

I have a large collection of Markdown notes which I process into a website using Quarto. I would like to have the last modified date of each note displayed on the generated page.

Is there a way to do so without setting this in the metadata block of each document, i.e. to set it on the project level (_quarto.yml)? I searched for information on this and did some experiments, but without success.

If this does not exist, I propose to add this feature.

[mcanouil]

Simply add date: last-modified at whatever level you need it.
See:

• https://quarto.org/docs/projects/quarto-projects.html#shared-metadata
• https://quarto.org/docs/projects/quarto-projects.html#directory-metadata

[allefeld]

You're right, I tried your files and it works.

I think the difference is that my documents don't have a metadata block. The title is specified simply as a first-level heading. That looks the same as a metadata block with title:, so I assumed it is the same, but apparently that's not true.

Thanks!

[cderv]

This is interesting.

I believe it will look the same because a title metadata field in a document will be shown as a h1 header.

However, I wonder if setting some global metadata in _quarto.yml should apply to all documents, including those with no metadata. It seems that currently if no YAML metadata block in the document, then we consider there is none at all (and not consider it empty one), so we don't merge the default one from global config. 🤔

@dragonstyle any thoughts on this ?

[dragonstyle]

I agree that the absence of document metadata doesn't seem like it should cause us not to merge project level metadata into the document.

[cderv]

Let's open an issue for it then:

• Set metadata on project level does not apply on document with not metadata header #6714