Unable to change date format on node created field

Question

On my article content type, I enabled "Display author and date information" but am unable to change the date format.

I'm using Druapl 8.0.0-beta14 with a sub-theme based on Classy. The field's value is already computed by the time the twig template and hook_preprocess_field get to it but was able to chase down the setting of the date format to the defaultSettings method in TimestampFormatter.php using a debugger.

    public static function defaultSettings() {
      return array(
        'date_format' => 'medium',
        'custom_date_format' => '',
        'timezone' => '',
      ) + parent::defaultSettings();
    }

So far, I haven't found a place in the admin UI or yaml files (or a hook, which I know I probably shouldn't be doing too much of in D8) where the date format can be changed. Interestingly enough, this "field" on the node seems to be some sort of pseudo-field, because the value is actually the timestamp on the revision_timestamp field in the node_revision table.

That said, how can I change the date format for this "field"?

Answer 1

One way to do this is using a preprocess hook in your .theme file. There you can do pretty much anything with that variable.

Here an example:

function [theme_name]_preprocess_node(&$variables) {
  if ($variables['display_submitted']) {

    // Getting the node creation timestamp from the node object.
    $date = $variables['node']->getCreatedTime();

    // Here you can use drupal's format_date() function, or some custom php date formatting.
    $variables['date'] = format_date($date, 'medium');
  }
}

In an earlier beta, before being able to alter the 'date' variable, I had to first pass the string through the create() method of the SafeString class like this:

$variables['date'] = \Drupal\Core\Render\SafeString::create('your dangerous new date string')

This might not be necessary anymore, concidering all the recent fuss around the safe string functions. Edit: I still need to do that in beta15.