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