New Hugo install, errors loading lanyon

[RichardDooling]

On Mac OSX Mavericks, if I do

hugo server --theme=lanyon --buildDrafts --watch

ERROR: 2014/09/30 Rendering error: template: theme/post/single.html:5:47: executing "theme/post/single.html" at <.Site.Params.DateFor...>: invalid value; expected string

ERROR: 2014/09/30 Rendering error: template: theme/index.html:10:53: executing "theme/index.html" at <.Site.Params.DateFor...>: invalid value; expected string

[tummychow]

Disclaimer: it's been months since I used hugo. The last time I used it, the themes hadn't been implemented yet, so I don't really know how this feature works... I'll see what I can do about this issue regardless.

Error suggests DateForm is the wrong type... could I see your config.json (or equivalent yaml/toml)? Looks like I never wrote any documentation for this, but basically the DateForm is an entry in the global configuration for the theme. It controls the way dates are printed and formatted.

[RichardDooling]

I just changed it to a date string. I just wanted to see what it looked like and it would not build. Now I got it working. Thanks. Looks nice!

[tummychow]

Phew, glad you got it fixed! For future reference, you can read about the valid strings here.

[dopplesoldner]

Hi, I am facing the same problem. I added the "DateForm"="ANSIC" to my config.toml file but it doesn't work still. Is there anything else I should do?

Thanks.

[tummychow]

The thing is that ANSIC is a Go constant that happens to equal a valid date/time format string. It's not a valid string in and of itself. You need to set DateForm to the value of ANSIC, ie "Mon Jan _2 15:04:05 2006".

[mostafahussein]

how we should fix <.Site.Params.DateFor...>: invalid value; expected string ??

[tummychow]

What's in your config.json or equivalent?

[mostafahussein]

config.toml

baseurl = "http://yourSiteHere"
languageCode = "en-us"
title = "My Blog"

[tummychow]

You need a DateForm key in there, eg DateForm = "Jan 2 2006". Take a look at the config.json in this repository.

Btw PRs are welcome to set a default dateform in the layouts, but I don't use Hugo anymore so making this easier is really not a priority for me.

[mxcl]

I added this (DateForm = "Jan 2 2006") to my config.toml, restarted the server and nothing is fixed. I tried the other values here too.

[tummychow]

what's the error message you're seeing and what's the full content of your config file?

[mxcl]

It was the same error message†, config.toml:

baseurl = "http://promisekit.org/"
languageCode = "en-us"
title = "PromiseKit"
PygmentsCodeFences = true 
DateForm = "Mon Jan _2 15:04:05 2006"

† ERROR: 2016/07/15 17:59:55 general.go:222: Error while rendering page fundamentals/introduction.md: template: theme/_default/single.html:5:47: executing "theme/_default/single.html" at <.Site.Params.DateFor...>: invalid value; expected string

[tummychow]

Ah, DateForm needs to be under params, not the top level. Try:

baseurl = "http://promisekit.org/"
languageCode = "en-us"
title = "PromiseKit"
PygmentsCodeFences = true 

[params]
DateForm = "Mon Jan _2 15:04:05 2006"

[mxcl]

Terrific, thanks.

[kaushalmodi]

I already had this:

[params]
  DateForm = "Mon Jan 2, 2006"

But that did not work!

Turns out that even though you call it .Site.Params.DateForm, that params needs to be lower case in config.toml.

Summary

Worky

[params]
  DateForm = "Mon Jan 2, 2006"

No Worky

[Params] # capitalized does not work
  DateForm = "Mon Jan 2, 2006"

[luizdepra]

I got the same problem with Hugo v.0.18-DEV. My configuration file:

baseurl = "http://luizdepra.com/"
title = "luizdepra"

theme = "lanyon"

languagecode = "en-us"
canonifyurls = true
pygmentsuseclasses = true
pygmentscodefences = true

[permalinks]
    post = ":year/:month/:day/:title/"
    fixed = ":title/"

[params]
    Title = "luizdepra"
    Tagline = "a sip of FUNgramming"
    Author = "Luiz de Prá"
    DateForm = "Jan 2, 2006"

I solved it changing .Site.Params.DateForm to .Site.Params.dateform. Have Hugo changed something in this last version?