garrickadenbuie-com/blog/quarto-now/index.qmd at main · gadenbuie/garrickadenbuie-com · GitHub

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
---
title: Add last rendered or modified time to Quarto
description: >
  Introducing `now`, a Quarto extension that adds the time right _now_,
  anywhere in your document.
categories:
  - Quarto
  - Extensions
image: feature.png
image-alt: >
  An AI-generated pencil-drawn sketch of a dream sequence.
  A spiral staircase descends into a clock face,
  surrounded by planets, clouds and stars.
modified: 2024-03-29
date: 2024-03-29
---

```{=html}
<img src="{{< meta image >}}" class="mb-4" alt="{{< meta image-alt >}}" />
```

## A blog is a perpetual side-project machine

They say that if you copy-paste the same code three times, write a function.
I've also heard that if you send the same email more than once, turn that email into a blog post.

But all the real work in life happens on Slack.
So if a friend asks for your advice and you brain dump everything you know about the easiest way to install and manage Python, then you've got a first draft blog post on your hands!

They also say the hardest part of writing is staring at the blank page.
But they are wrong.
The hardest part of writing is figuring out how to start a new `.qmd` file in your blog repo without bumping into 3 to 10 other things you have been meaning to do.

Or worse, you might encounter that draft post you've been working on for months.
Learn from my mistakes: it's okay to stash that post, you can always tell yourself you'll come back to it later!

You can probably tell by now that this is **not** a post about Python tooling for a happy setup.
It's also not a post about the few CSS tweaks I made while trying to open up this editor.

This post is sponsored by this a bit of YAML that caught my eye in my `_quarto.yml` file in the split second before I closed all my open tabs.

``` yaml
page-footer:
    left: >-
      © 2023 Garrick Aden-Buie
```

This is not acceptable.
It has been 2024 for a whole 89 days and that little `© 2023` has been sitting in my page footer the entire time.
I'm lucky I haven't gotten any angry emails about it!

Now the fix could be easy.
Consider this: I could change that file, commit it, and push it.

``` patch
page-footer:
  left: >-
-    © 2023 Garrick Aden-Buie
+    © 2024 Garrick Aden-Buie
```

One GitHub Action, several minutes, and two Netlify notifications later my blog would be back to the future.

But this obviously won't work.
Time stops for no one.
What will I do in March of 2025?
Come back to this file and edit it by hand?
*Again? Like a caveman?* Hard no.

Wouldn't it be awesome if I could replace that `2023` that should be `2024` with something that turns into the current year whenever my blog rebuilds?
I could save minutes in the entire lifetime of my blog!
Imagine replacing the `2023` with something that would update itself automatically, like this:

``` {.yaml shortcodes="false"}
page-footer:
  left: >-
    © {{< now year >}} Garrick Aden-Buie
```

It would be awesome, but that syntax doesn't exist in Quarto.
Or it didn't until I my productive procrastination instincts kicked in!

Introducing [now](https://pkg.garrickadenbuie.com/quarto-now), a quarto extension for easily adding the time right now – *err...* the time right now when your Quarto blog or document is rendered.

## Hello, now

To start using now in your own Quarto projects, just install the extension with this command.

``` bash
quarto add gadenbuie/quarto-now
```

You can read all about the extension on its (quarto-built) page here: [pkg.garrickadenbuie.com/quarto-now](https://pkg.garrickadenbuie.com/quarto-now).
Or keep reading this post for a quick intro.

## Using now

now, the extension, comes with two shortcodes you can use just about anywhere: `{{{< now >}}}` and `{{{< modified >}}}`.
Both work in the same way, except that `{{{< modified >}}}` will show the last modified time of the document, either by using the `modified` metadata field or the last modified timestamp of the file (on macOS and Linux only, sorry).

Here's a quick example of the shortcodes in use.
Note that in this post I added the `modified` date, which gives me a bit more control over what counts as a "modification".

```{.yaml shortcodes="false"}
---
title: Add last rendered or modified time to Quarto
modified: 2024-03-29
---

This document was last modified at {{< modified >}}
and it was last rendered at {{< now >}}.
```

> This document was last modified at {{< modified >}} and it was last rendered at {{< now >}}.

## Formatting the time output

By default, now uses ISO 8601 (ish) formatting, but that's not usually the most human-readable format.
now comes with a few built-in aliases for common date and time parts.

| Shortcode                   | Result                  | Format String |
|:----------------------------|:------------------------|:-------------:|
| `{{{< now >}}}`             | {{< now >}}             |   `"%F %T"`   |
| `{{{< now year >}}}`        | {{< now year >}}        |    `"%Y"`     |
| `{{{< now month >}}}`       | {{< now month >}}       |    `"%B"`     |
| `{{{< now day >}}}`         | {{< now day >}}         |    `"%d"`     |
| `{{{< now weekday >}}}`     | {{< now weekday >}}     |    `"%A"`     |
| `{{{< now hour >}}}`        | {{< now hour >}}        |    `"%I"`     |
| `{{{< now minute >}}}`      | {{< now minute >}}      |    `"%M"`     |
| `{{{< now ampm >}}}`        | {{< now ampm >}}        |    `"%p"`     |
| `{{{< now date >}}}`        | {{< now date >}}        |    `"%x"`     |
| `{{{< now time >}}}`        | {{< now time >}}        |    `"%X"`     |
| `{{{< now datetime >}}}`    | {{< now datetime >}}    |    `"%c"`     |
| `{{{< now isodate >}}}`     | {{< now isodate >}}     |    `"%F"`     |
| `{{{< now isotime >}}}`     | {{< now isotime >}}     |    `"%T"`     |
| `{{{< now isodatetime >}}}` | {{< now isodatetime >}} |  `"%FT%T%z"`  |
| `{{{< now timestamp >}}}`   | {{< now timestamp >}}   |   `"%F %T"`   |

Note that the shortcodes only accept a single format argument,
so you'd need to write `{{{< modified month >}}} {{{< modified year >}}}`
instead of `{{{< modified month year >}}}`.

That said, you can always use the format strings supported by Lua's `os.date()` function,
so `{{{< modified "%B %Y" >}}}` gives you the month and year:
{{< modified "%B %Y" >}}.
Note that because the format string has a space, it needs to be quoted `"%B %Y"`.

You can find the complete list of accepted format strings in [the now extension docs](https://pkg.garrickadenbuie.com/quarto-now/#format-strings).

## Have a good day, meow!

This was a fun excursion into the world of Quarto extensions!
Thanks for reading and I hope you find **now** useful in your own projects.
May you benefit from my inability to do the thing I'm "supposed to do" (hey, it's my free time!).


---

::: small
The feature image was generated with DALL-E 3 and the following prompt:
_an m.c. escher style pencil sketch of a dreamy clock face_.
:::