@metalsmith/permalinks

A Metalsmith plugin that applies a custom permalink pattern to files, and renames them so that they're nested properly for static sites (converting about.html into about/index.html).

Installation

NPM:

npm install @metalsmith/permalinks

Yarn:

yarn add @metalsmith/permalinks

Usage

By default @metalsmith/permalinks moves all HTML source files at :dirname?/:basename to the build as :dirname/:basename/index.html and adds a customizable permalink property to te file metadata. You can tweak which files to match, set fixed permalinks, use a permalink pattern with :placeholder's that will be read from the file's metadata, and finetune how that metadata and the final permalink are formatted as a string through the directoryIndex, slug, date and trailingSlash options.

Fixed permalinks or permalink patterns can be defined in file front-matter, or for a set of files through plugin options. Permalink patterns defined in file front-matter take precedence over plugin options.

import { dirname } from 'path'
import { fileURLToPath } from 'url'
import Metalsmith from 'metalsmith'
import permalinks from '@metalsmith/permalinks'

const __dirname = dirname(fileURLToPath(import.meta.url))

// defaults
Metalsmith(__dirname).use(permalinks())

// explicit defaults
Metalsmith(__dirname).use(
  permalinks({
    // files to target
    match: '**/*.html',
    // permalink pattern with placeholders
    pattern: ':dirname?/:basename',
    // how to format Date values when substituting pattern parts
    date: {
      format: 'YYYY/MM/DD',
      locale: 'en-US' // only relevant if you use textual date part formats
    },
    // how to postprocess a resolved permalink in a URL (and filesystem)-friendly way
    slug: {
      lowercase: true,
      remove: /[<>:"\'|?*]|[^\\w\\s$_+~.()!\\-@\\/]+/g,
      extend: { ':': '-', '|': '-', '/': '-', '<': '', '>': '' }
    },
    trailingSlash: false,
    directoryIndex: 'index.html',
    // throw an error when 2 files have the same target permalink
    duplicates: 'error',
    // additional linksets
    linksets: []
  })
)

Every permalinks() instantiation supports the following options:

• directoryIndex - traditionally index.html, but servers could be configured with alternatives. See Overriding the default index.html file
• trailingSlash - whether to add a trailing / so that the permalink becomes blog/post/ instead of blog/post. Useful to avoid redirects on servers which do not have a built-in rewrite module enabled.
• duplicates - what to do when 2 files have the same target destination. See Ensure files have unique URI's
• linksets

Matching files

The match option can be 1 or multiple glob patterns, or an object with key-value pairs that will be matched on either... or... basis.

// only match non-root html files
metalsmith.use(permalinks({ match: '*/**/*.html' }))

// match templates so you can use the permalink property in @metalsmith/layouts later
metalsmith.use(permalinks({ match: '**/*.hbs' }))

// match files that are either primary:false or have id:1
metalsmith.use(permalinks({ match: { primary: false, id: 1 } }))

If a match object property targets an array in file metadata, it will be matched if the array contains the value in the match object.

Defining linksets

Whereas the default match option globally defines which files are permalinked, additional linksets can be defined with their own match, pattern, date and slug options.

metalsmith.use(
  permalinks({
    // original options act as the keys of a `default` linkset,
    pattern: ':dirname?/:basename',
    date: 'YYYY',

    // each linkset defines a match, and any other desired option
    linksets: [
      {
        match: { collection: 'blogposts' },
        pattern: 'blog/:date/:title',
        date: 'MM-DD-YYYY'
      },
      {
        match: { collection: 'pages' },
        pattern: 'pages/:title'
      }
    ]
  })
)

Every matched file is only permalinked once, even if it is matched by multiple linksets. The linksets defined in linksets take precedence over the default match, and the first linkset in linksets takes precedence over the next. In the example above, a file which has collection: ['pages','blogposts'] would be permalinked to blog/:date/:title.

Fixed permalinks

You can declare a fixed permalink in file front-matter:

---
# src/topic_metalsmith.html
permalink: topics/static-site/metalsmith
---

@metalsmith/permalinks will move the source file topic_metalsmith.html to the build path topics/static-site/metalsmith/index.html and add permalink: 'topics/static-site/metalsmith' to the file metadata. Setting an explicit front-matter permalink overrides any other match that also matched the file from plugin options.

Typical use case: SEO-sensitive links that should be preserved, even if you moved or renamed the file or updated its front-matter.

Computed permalinks

File permalinks can be computed from other (own) file metadata properties.

---
# src/topic_metalsmith.html
topic: static-site
subtopic: metalsmith
permalink: topics/:topic/:subtopic
---

Just like the previous example, this will also move the source file topic_metalsmith.html to the build path topics/static-site/metalsmith/index.html and add permalink: 'topics/static-site/metalsmith' to the file metadata.

Placeholders can also refer to a keypath within the front-matter permalink or plugin option linkset, e.g. permalink: blog/:postData.html.slug.

Skipping permalinks

An otherwise linkset-matched file can be excluded from permalinking by setting permalink: false in its front-matter:

---
title: error
permalink: false
---

Explicitly disabling a permalink in front-matter overrides any other pattern that also matched the file from plugin options.

Typical use case: hosting static sites on third-party providers with specific conventions, e.g. on AWS S3 there must be a top level error.html file and not an error/index.html file.

Customizing permalinks

The pattern can contain a reference to any piece of metadata associated with the file by using the :PROPERTY syntax for placeholders. By default, all files get a :dirname?/:basename (+ directoryIndex = /index.html) pattern, i.e. the original filepath blog/post1.html becomes blog/post1/index.html. The dirname and basename values are automatically made available by @metalsmith/permalinks for the purpose of generating the permalink.

If you want to tweak how the characters in the permalink are transformed (for example to handle unicode & non-ascii characters),see slug options.

The pattern can also be set as such:

metalsmith.use(
  permalinks({
    // original options act as the keys of a `default` linkset,
    pattern: ':title',
    date: 'YYYY',

    // each linkset defines a match, and any other desired option
    linksets: [
      {
        match: { collection: 'blogposts' },
        pattern: 'blog/:date/:title',
        date: 'MM-DD-YYYY'
      },
      {
        match: { collection: 'pages' },
        pattern: 'pages/:title'
      }
    ]
  })
)

Optional permalink pattern parts

The permalink example in Computed permalinks would result in an error if subtopic or topic were not defined. To allow this add a question mark to the placeholder like :topic/:subtopic?. If the property is not defined in a file's metadata, it will be replaced with an empty string ''. For example the pattern :category?/:title applied to a source directory with 2 files:

--- title: With category category: category1 ---

--- title: No category ---

would generate the file tree:

build
├── category1/with-category/index.html
└── no-category/index.html

Date formatting

By default any date will be converted to a YYYY/MM/DD format when using in a permalink pattern, but you can change the conversion by passing a date option:

metalsmith.use(
  permalinks({
    pattern: ':date/:title',
    date: 'YYYY'
  })
)

Starting from v3 @metalsmith/permalinks no longer uses moment.js. A subset of date-formatting tokens relevant to site URI's are made available that are largely compatible with those defined at moment.js:

Token	Description	Examples
D	Date numeric	1 2 ... 30 31
DD	Date numeric zero-padded	01 02 ... 30 31
d	Day of week numeric	0 1 ... 5
dd	Day of week 2-letter (*)	Su Mo ... Sa
ddd	Day of week short (*)	Sun Mon ... Sat
dddd	Day of week long (*)	Sunday Monday ... Saturday
M	Month numeric	1 2 ... 11 12
MM	Month numeric zero-padded	01 02 ... 11 12
MMM	Month short (*)	Jan, Feb
MMMM	Month full (*)	January, February
Q	Quarter	1 2 3 4
YY	Year 2 last digits	70, 24
YYYY	Year full	1970, 2024
W	Week of year	1 2 ... 51 52
WW	Week of year zero-padded	01 02 ... 51 52
x	Unix milliseconds timestamp	1697401520387
X	Unix timestamp	1697401520

Tokens marked with (*) use the Node.js Intl API which is not available by default in every Node.js distribution.
The date option can be a string of date-formatting tokens and will default to en-US for the locale, or an object in the format { format: 'YYYY', locale: 'en-US' }. However, if your Node.js distribution does not have support for the Intl API, or the locale you specified is missing, the build will throw an error.

Slug options

You can finetune how a pattern is processed by providing custom slug options. By default slugify is used and patterns will be lowercased.

You can pass custom slug options:

metalsmith.use(
  permalinks({
    slug: {
      replacement: '_',
      lower: false
    }
  })
)

The following makes everything snake-case but allows ' to be converted to -

metalsmith.use(
  permalinks({
    slug: {
      remove: /[^a-z0-9- ]+/gi,
      lower: true,
      extend: {
        "'": '-'
      }
    }
  })
)

Custom 'slug' function

If the result is not to your liking, you can replace the slug function altogether. For now only the js version of syntax is supported and tested.

import { slugify } from 'transliteration'

metalsmith.use(
  permalinks({
    pattern: ':title',
    slug: slugify
  })
)

There are plenty of other options on npm for transliteration and slugs. https://www.npmjs.com/browse/keyword/transliteration.

Overriding the default index.html file

Use directoryIndex to define a custom index file.

metalsmith.use(
  permalinks({
    directoryIndex: 'alt.html'
  })
)

Use an empty directoryIndex to create extensionless files that can be accompanied by a matching Content-Type Response header with a server like Apache or Nginx, so you could call https://mysite.com/api/plugins supposing you have files at src/api/plugins.json

metalsmith.use(
  permalinks({
    match: '**/*.json',
    directoryIndex: ''
  })
)

Ensure files have unique URIs

Normally you should take care to make sure your source files do not permalink to the same target.
When URI clashes occur nevertheless, the build will halt with an error stating the target file conflict.

metalsmith.use(
  permalinks({
    duplicates: 'error'
  })
)

There are 3 other possible values for the duplicates option: index will add an -<index> suffix to other files with the same target URI, overwrite will silently overwrite previous files with the same target URI.

The third possibility is to provide your own function to handle duplicates, with the signature:

function paginateDupes(targetPath, files, filename, options) => {
  let target,
    counter = 0,
    postfix = ''
  while (files[target]) {
    postfix = `/${++counter}`
    target = path.join(`${targetPath}${postfix}`, options.indexFile)
  }
  return target
}

Return an error in the custom duplicates handler to halt the build.
The example above is a variant of the index value, where 2 files targeting the URI gallery will be written to gallery/1/index.html and gallery/2/index.html.

Note: The duplicates option combines the unique and duplicatesFail options of version < 2.4.1. Specifically, duplicatesFail:true maps to duplicates:'error', unique:true maps to duplicates:'index', and unique:false or duplicatesFail:false map to duplicates:'overwrite'.

Maintaining relative links

Previously this plugin had a relative: true option that allowed one to transform a file structure such as:

|_ posts
    |_ hello-world.html
    |_ post-image.png

into

|_ posts
    |_ hello-world
    |   |_ index.html
    |   |_ post-image.png
    |_ post-image.png

This allowed users to reference post-image.png as <img src="./post-image.png">, but also duplicated the asset and resulted in other unexpected side-effects. Our advice is to keep your media in an assets or similar folder that does not undergo path transforms, and reference it with a root-relative URI (eg /assets/hello-world/post-image.png). If this is not an option for you, the better way to structure your source folder is to have the source path of the referencing HTML file equal to its destination permalink:

|_ posts
    |_ hello-world
        |_ index.html
        |_ post-image.png

Migrating from v2 to v3

The v2 -> v3 update had a lot of breaking changes, but the good news is v3 can do all that v2 did, just a bit differently, and more. v3 is less forgiving (and more predictable) in that it will throw errors when a (required) :placeholder resolves to an undefined value.

Previously permalinks would omit that pattern part so that a my-post.html with pattern :category/:title and title: My post but without a defined category would be output to blog/my-post/index.html. To preserve this behavior, make the failing :placeholder? optional by adding a question mark.

The indexFile option has been renamed to directoryIndex. The options duplicatesFail and unique have been condensed into duplicates, see also Ensure files have unique URI's.

Debug

To enable debug logs, set the DEBUG environment variable to @metalsmith/permalinks:

metalsmith.env('DEBUG', '@metalsmith/permalinks*')

Alternatively you can set DEBUG to @metalsmith/* to debug all Metalsmith core plugins.

CLI usage

To use this plugin with the Metalsmith CLI, add @metalsmith/permalinks to the plugins key in your metalsmith.json file:

{
  "plugins": [
    {
      "permalinks": {
        "pattern": ":title"
      }
    }
  ]
}

License

MIT