Last Updated: 2024-04-25

I got unexpected results (even though the code "compiled") with this code for generating a sitemap.

# Context: the `lastmod` attribute is used to communicate with search engines in
# a sitemap as to whether it's worth their while re-crawling your page.
add_sitemap_page institution_taxon_path(institution_taxon.slug, subject_taxon, lastmod: lastmod)

Specifically, the URL had an unnecessary lastmod attribute (i.e. /oxford/law?lastmod=999999) whereas the sitemap entry was missing this info.

The issue was that the hash key value entry lastmod went to the wrong function - to my url generator institution_taxon_path() instead of add_sitemap_page.

Here's the fix:

add_sitemap_page(
  institution_taxon_path(institution_taxon.slug, subject_taxon), 
  lastmod: lastmod
)

Lesson

When nesting functions that both take dict-like structures, don't be shy about using parentheses to ensure arguments end up in the right function.