Atom Feeds should pick up "updated" and "published" elements automatically from auto_now and auto_now_add fields

[matt@…]

Atom 1.0 requires each entry to have an "updated" element, which is the date of the last update. It also provides the optional "published" element. Both of these could easily be picked up from auto_now and auto_now_add DateField/DateTimeField types in the appropriate table, if they exist.

(When an auto_now is lacking, the auto_now_add should be used as both "updated" and "published", as "updated" is required.)

[anonymous]

It appears that you do put an updated element in the feed, but you don't put an updated element in each entry of the feed. Can feed.add_item() be extended for this.

[Malcolm Tredinnick]

We do have an "updated" element on each entry in the feeds now. So that part of the problem is taken care of. The other request -- trying to engineer the values from the assumption that an auto_now field is the right one -- looks like a bit too much of an assumption. On a semantic level, the "updated" element doesn't necessarily contain "last time it was touched at all"; it is intended as "last significant update", which often excludes things like minor typo editing.

I think this a bit too fragile to implement.