hugo/docs/content/en/configuration/front-matter.md

title	linkTitle	description	categories	keywords
Configure front matter	Front matter	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 several tokens to assist with front matter configuration.

Token	Description
:default	The default ordered sequence of date fields.
:fileModTime	The file's last modification timestamp.
:filename	The date from the file name, if present.
:git	The Git author date for the file's last revision.

When Hugo extracts a date from a file name, it uses the rest of the file name to generate the page's slug, but only if a slug isn't already specified in the page's front matter. For example, given the name 2025-02-01-article.md, Hugo will set the date to 2025-02-01 and the slug to article.

To enable access to the Git author date, set enableGitInfo to true, or use
the --enableGitInfo flag when building your site.

Consider this example:

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

To determine date, Hugo tries to extract the date 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.