metalsmith-index

This simple plugin for Metalsmith is aimed at creating directory indexes. It is different from metalsmith-collections in that it does not simply create metadata to link documents between them, but creates new entries in the list of files manipulated by Metalsmith. In other words, it is useful to create directory indexes ex-nihilo.

Usage

metalsmith-index requires a list of indexes to generate or it will do nothing. This list is provideed using an object. Each key of this object is the path of a directory to index. Each value associated to a key is a collection of options aimed at controling the index output.

If using the CLI for Metalsmith, metalsmith-index can be used like any other plugin by including it in metalsmith.json.

{
  "plugins": {
    "metalsmith-index": {
      "pub": {},
      "archives/2017": {}
    }
  }
}

In Metalscript's JavaScript API, metalsmith-index can be used like any other plugin by attaching it to the function invocation chain on the Metalscript object.

const index = require('metalsmith-index')
 
require('metalsmith')(__dirname)
  .use(index({
    'pub': {},
    'archives/2017': {}
  }))
  .build();

Behaviour

The examples provided above both add two new files (pub/index.list and archives/2017/index.list) to the list of files to be passed to subsequent plugins. Those files contain respectively the list of the filenames from the pub and archives/2017 directories.

More specifically, each entry produced by metalsmith-index contains two keys:

• files is the list of the metadata about the indexed files. For each file, it contains an object with the name, the path and the last modification date. This can be used to easily handle the entry programmatically, or with a layout plugin for example.

• contents is a buffer with the list of the indexed filenames. This is useful to handle the entry like any other source file.

Options

Each index to produce can be given an options object. Here are the options that can be used to alter the index content. Everything else is metadata that is added to the created index file.

• filename provides the entry filename (default is index.list).

• filter is a function to be used to test the files to be indexed. The function must take two arguments: the filename and the Metalsmith entry (with the file contents and stats). Are only indexed the files for which the function returns True.

• format is a function to be applied on each index file so as to create its representation in the list. Default is the filename followed by a new line character. The function must take two arguments: the filename and the Metalsmith entry (with the file contents and stats), and return a string.

• sort is a function which is called to sort the files read in the source directory before building the index. By default, the alphabetic order is used. The function is used to sort an array of strings and must behave like a compareFunction.

• recursive is false by default: the plugin ignores sub-directories. When set to true, they are indexed recursively.