Document Date¶

The Document Date feature adds a dedicated date field to Files, allowing editors to assign a meaningful date to uploaded documents. This is useful for documents like reports, meeting minutes, or official publications where the document’s own date differs from the upload date. The document date can be disabled as well.

Overview¶

Files in the CMS receive a document_date field that:

Defaults to the current date/time when a new file is uploaded
Can be manually set or changed by editors
Is optional and can be cleared
Is indexed in the catalog Date index, enabling date-based sorting and querying of files

The document_date value replaces the default Date catalog index for Files. This means that sorting files by date will use the document date rather than the publication or creation date.

REST API¶

Reading the Document Date¶

The document_date field is included in the standard REST API response for File content.

const response = await fetch('/Plone/my-folder/annual-report.pdf', {
    headers: {
        'Accept': 'application/json'
    }
});
const file = await response.json();
console.log(file.document_date);  // "2025-06-15T10:00:00"

Querying Files by Date¶

Since document_date is indexed in the catalog Date index, files can be queried and sorted by their document date through the @search endpoint.

// Search for files sorted by document date (newest first)
const response = await fetch(
    '/Plone/@search?portal_type=File&sort_on=Date&sort_order=descending',
    {
        headers: { 'Accept': 'application/json' }
    }
);
const data = await response.json();
data.items.forEach(file => {
    console.log(file.title, file.document_date);
});

import requests

response = requests.get(
    'http://localhost:8080/Plone/@search',
    params={
        'portal_type': 'File',
        'sort_on': 'Date',
        'sort_order': 'descending',
    },
    headers={'Accept': 'application/json'}
)
for item in response.json()['items']:
    print(item['title'], item.get('document_date'))