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File timestamp updating

Asked by Charlie Gorichanaz
Posted October 16, 2013, in Featured.

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1 Answer

Charlie Gorichanaz on October 16, 2013, 3:57 a.m. Reply

Publishing anything in Movable Type will only result in a changed timestamp if the file actually gets changed. MT compares the rendered template to the existing file and only proceeds to update the file if the two are not identical.

This is true when using static publishing as well as the publishing queue. Static publishing makes use of the rebuild_file and rebuild_indexes subroutines in lib/MT/WeblogPublisher.pm. The publishing queue makes use of the rebuild_from_fileinfo subroutine in the same file, which in turn calls rebuild_file.

In rebuild_file and rebuild_indexes is code like this:

## First check whether the content is actually
## changed. If not, we won't update the published
## file, so as not to modify the mtime.
unless ( $fmgr->content_is_updated( $file, \$html ) ) {
    $timer->unpause if $timer;
    return 1;
}

The content_is_updated subroutine is defined in lib/MT/FileMgr/Local.pm. This checks if the Perl module Digest::MD5 is installed, and if it is, the comparison is done with a MD5 hash of the existing file and rendered template. If the module is not installed, the comparison is done character by character.

File timestamp updating

1 Answer

Charlie Gorichanaz

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