Symphony.

Apparently every content item has a system date: http://getsymphony.com/learn/concepts/view/system-dates/

Unfortunately they "cannot be used for data source filtering and are not included in an entry’s XML output". But it seems "They can populate data source output parameters".

Could someone explain to me what that last part means?

It's really a shame that you can't have them in the XML, since they'd come in really hand when you're creating a news feed, where you need a pubDate, as you know. Or is there a way to have the current date stored with an entry, without the author being able to change it?

Hi Daniel,

Maybe you can find this useful.

Not to sure about filtering because its been a while since I used it but it does allow the pubDate to show in XML

https://github.com/pointybeard/systemdatefield

Unfortunately they "cannot be used for data source filtering and are not included in an entry’s XML output".

This is only partially true. You can now filter by System Date in a data source. When you create a data source you will see System Date in the dropdown menu, meaning you can indeed filter on this system field. However the date is still not exposed in the entry's XML.

But it seems "They can populate data source output parameters".

When you create a datasource you can choose a field to act as an output parameter. So if you choose System ID as the output parameter, the data source will build a list of all of the system IDs of the entries it finds, and output this list for other data sources to consume and filter on too. System Date is exposed as a field that can used as an output parameter.

There is, however, a System Date field you can add to entries. This simply exposes the built-in date into the entry table in the Symphony backend. It does not, oddly, also show the date in the XML.

Showing the system date (and indeed the system author) field in the XML is something that was suggested a long time ago. Perhaps we could re-ignite this discussion:

Date Created, Date Modified and Author as System values on entries

There is an open issue for enhancing the System Date functionality to also track modification date and expose this is in the XML, so it's on the radar :)