Virtual Pages plugin for Metalsmith

This is a plugin for Metalsmith that takes a JSON input a generates pages from its contents. It's useful if you have a set of pages you'd like to create/edit at single place (e.g. YAML file), but generate separate pages.

Unlike metalsmith-json-to-files, it works with a variable, not a file path, which is useful if the JSON was loaded before running Metalsmith. Or if it was other format loaded with gray-matter, etc.

Usage

This plugin is meant to be used with the API version — possibly works with CLI, but that wasn't tested yet (one of the reasons why it's 0.* version). Just add it to the metalsmith pipeline, as soon as possible — so the rest of your plugins can work over the generated virtual pages as well.

var virtualPages = require('metalsmith-virtual-pages');
var vpSource = require('virtual-pages-source.json');

require('metalsmith')(__dirname)
  .use(virtualPages(vpSource, opts))
  // …
  .build();

Additionally, the first argument might be an array of sources. In that case, the array will be merged into one object and processed.

Data format

The first argument is an associative array consisting of path: {metadata/content/options} pairs:

{ "path/to/page-to-build.md" : {
    "title": "Page title",
    "moremeta": "Metadata",
    "contents": "# Headline\n\nThis is a first paragraph.",
    "specials": {
        "markdown_this_": "[Google](http://www.google.com)",
        "evaluate_this?": "s.title == 'Page title'",
        "lodash_template_this$": "${s.title} is the title",
        "chain_$": "# ${s.title}"
    },
    "/child-of-this-page.md" : {
        "title": "Child of Page Title",
        "contents": "use-as-source.html",
        "ignore": "true"
    }
}}

Control characters and special keys

• If the key ends with one of the following characters: _, ? or $, it will be processed before passing on:
  • _ will be processed with markdown-it
  • ? will be evaluated as JS code.
  • $ will be parsed as a Lodash template
• If the key starts with forwards slash /something, it will add a child to previous page. This child has access to parent's data (mentioned in previous bullet points)
• contents is a special key: Its contents are passed to metalsmith as a content, not metadata. What the content might be is decided in following order: a. a path in files (the file contents is copied and removed from files) b. a path relative to metalsmith root directory: the file is loaded. c. neither: value of the contents key is transformed to Buffer and passed on
• ignore is another special key. If it's there, and is set to true, this file (and all of its possible descendats will be skipped)

Both evaluation (?) and Lodash templates ($) have access to following:

• s.* — self, loaded up until this point
• p.* — parent, if applicable (e.g. for child pages)
• Lodash as _

All control characters are stackable, so you can first interpolate and then run markdown over it — like in the example. The specials.chain will be first given the title and then markdown-ed, so its value will be:

<h1>Page title</h1>

Options

Options is optional second argument. Any object given will merged with defaults:

defaults = {
  keepSources: false # keep sources used as base for virtual pages
  markdown: {        # markdown-it settings
    html: true
    breaks: true
    linkify: true
    typographer: true
  }
}

Additionally, markdown-it has the markdown-it-footnote plugin enabled.

options.keepSources: Default setting is false, which means that any file used for contents of any virtual page will be removed from files after all virtual pages have been generated. If you wish to keep the original file as well, set it to true.

Limitations

• it's synchronous
• at any given time, the only metadata known to evaluated and templated fields are the data above it. It's parsed as it goes, with the order that is set in json

License

ISC

Author

Adam Kiss

Changelog

v0.4.0

• Support for multiple generators (passed as an array of generators)

v0.3.0

• Added a readme. This is such a big accomplishment, there's a new minor version for it.

v0.2.0

• it works for a single object.