metalsmith-frontmatter-file-loader

A Metalsmith plugin to load files from paths added to frontmatter.

You could then use metalsmith-frontmatter-renderer to render the loaded data into html.

Installation

$ npm install metalsmith-frontmatter-file-loader

Config options

You can pass some basic options to customize the behaviour:

{
  "key": "files",
  "out": "files",
  "suppressNoFilesError": false,
  "allowMissingFiles": false
}

key is the key of the object to iterate over in the files frontmatter. Default "files".
out is the key of the object to update the values upon. Default the value of key.
suppressNoFilesError is a boolean to determine the behaviour when there are no files to load. Set to true to prevent an error being thrown if there are no files to load. Default false.
allowMissingFiles is a boolean to determine the behaviour when a file fails to load. Set to true to prevent an error being thrown if a file is missing or cannot be read as a utf-8 string. If a file fails to load then it will replace the value with an empty string. Default false.

CLI Usage

Install via npm and then add the metalsmith-frontmatter-file-loader key to your metalsmith.json plugin:

{
  "plugins": {
    "metalsmith-frontmatter-file-loader": true
  }
}

or with configuration options:

{
  "plugins": {
    "metalsmith-frontmatter-file-loader": {
      "key": "blocks",
      "suppressNoFilesError": true,
      "allowMissingFiles": true
    }
  }
}

Javascript Usage

Pass options to the plugin and pass it to Metalsmith with the use method:

var fmfl = require('metalsmith-frontmatter-file-loader');
 
metalsmith.use(fmfl({
  key: "blocks",
  suppressNoFilesError: true,
  allowMissingFiles: true
}));

Example frontmatter

src/index.html

———
files:
    foo: './files/foo.txt'
    bar: './files/bar.md'
———
<h1>This is the <code>contents</code> of the file.</h1>

By default this would load the contents of ./files/foo.txt (relative to the metalsmith root, not the file containing the frontmatter) and replace the path with the file contents. Then it would do the same for ./files/bar.md. It doesn't do any conversion of the data but you can use metalsmith-frontmatter-renderer if you desire this behaviour.

e.g this is the equivalent of having written out the file contents into the frontmatter as so:

———
files:
    foo: 'This is the text content of ./files/foo.txt!'
    bar: 'This is the *markdown* content of `./files/bar.md` :)'
———
<h1>This is the <code>contents</code> of the file.</h1>

If you use a property other than files then you can pass the name as a configuration option. See the config documentation above.

License

MIT

npm