eleventy-plugin-link_to

A Nunjucks tag to link to another internal content in Eleventy with its slug.

Installation

The plugin is available on npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/eleventy-plugin-link_to

Install it as a dev dependency in your Eleventy project:

npm install eleventy-plugin-link_to --save-dev

Then add the plugin in your .eleventy.js configuration file and make sure Markdown is parsed with Nunjucks instead of the default Liquid template engine:

module.exports = function (eleventyConfig) {
  eleventyConfig.addPlugin(require('eleventy-plugin-link_to'));
  return {
    markdownTemplateEngine: 'njk',
  };
};

Usage

This plugin adds a Nunjucks tag you can use both in Nunjucks layouts and in Markdown content.

Here's the syntax:

{% link_to "the-content-slug" %}

ℹ️ This is a Nunjucks custom tag, not an Eleventy shortcode.

Let's say you have the following contents:

/about.md
/index.md
/notes/2019/03/10/hello.md
/notes/2020/09/05/how-many-plugins.md
/posts/2020/09/22/hello.md
/posts/2020/10/20/new-plugin.md
/tag-page.njk

Use the full slug

You can use {% link_to "new-plugin" %} to link to /posts/2020/10/20/new-plugin/.

Use the filePathStem

ℹ️ In Eleventy, filePathStem is "mapped from inputPath and is useful if you’ve inherited a project that doesn’t use clean permalinks."

There are two content with the same hello slug, so you can't use {% link_to "hello" %}.

You can use {% link_to "/notes/2019/03/10/hello" %} instead.

Use the URL

You can also use {% link_to "/notes/2019/03/10/hello/" %}, if you use Eleventy's default permalinks.

Use only a fragment of a slug/pathStem/URL

You can also use just a fragment of the content's slug (or pathStem, or URL) if you know that there is no ambiguity with another content.

You can for example use {% link_to "2020/09/22" %} because there is only one content with a slug containing 2020/09/22.

---

On my site, I can use {% link_to "/eleventy/" %} because I know the only content on my site with a slug containing /eleventy/ is the page of the Eleventy tag, which URL is /tags/eleventy/.

⚠ I have to be carreful, if I add an article with the title Eleventy later, this link will break!

If I use only eleventy without any /, it will currently find the page with the URL /links/2020/03/17/eleventy-s-new-performance-leaderboard/, which is the only content with eleventy in the slug (the /tags/eleventy/ page's slug is tag-page, see below), and slugs are parsed before pathStems and URLs.

Error messages

If there is any issue finding the content you want to link to, Eleventy build log will contain one of these error messages:

Multiple contents have the same slug '…'

If you use a slug that is common to multiple contents.

For example, with a single /tag-page.njk template generating multiple pages with pagination, trying to {% link_to "tag-page" %} will give this error:

[link_to] Multiple contents have the same slug 'tag-page':
- /tag-page
- /tag-page
- …
- /tag-page
- /tag-page
 -> you can use link_to with the filePathStem or URL

Found multiple slugs containing '…', couldn't decide

If you use a sub-string present in multiple slugs, you'll get this error:

[link_to] Found multiple slugs containing 'plugin', couldn't decide:
- how-many-plugins
- new-plugin

Found multiple paths or URL containing '…', couldn't decide

If you use a sub-string present in multiple pathStem or URL, you'll get this error:

[link_to] Found multiple paths or URL containing '2020/09', couldn't decide:
/notes/2020/09/05/how-many-plugins/
/posts/2020/09/22/hello/