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[QUESTION] How to adapt/customize Frontmatter keys #31
Description
Hello. I'm trying to port my blog to Statiq, using this theme.
My old blog uses Markdown files with this kind of Frontmatter:
---
title: "3 ways to inject DateTime and test it"
path: "/blog/inject-and-test-datetime-dependency"
tags: ["CSharp", "Tests", "MainArticle"]
featuredImage: "./cover.jpg"
excerpt: "DateTime, Guid, and Random values are not under your direct control. You should abstract them to write better code and testing. We'll see 3 ways to inject and test them in .NET Core projects."
created: 2021-01-12
updated: 2021-01-12
---I'm looking for a way to adapt the "old" structure with the one required by this theme.
In particular, I'll have to map
title=>Titlecreated=>Publishedexcerpt=>Lead
Then, I'll also have to perform 2 transformations:
path must be used as Destination Path ( how can I customize the example DestinationPath: => $"{Document.GetDateTime("Published").ToString("yyyy/MM")}/{Document.Destination.FileName}" ? )
Then, how can I define the cover image for each blog post, using the one defined in the featuredImage field?
Activity
bellons91 commentedon Feb 13, 2023
The two approaches that I suppose I could take to solve the first issue (Frontmatter mappings) are:
Title,Published, andLeadare actually calledtitle,created,excerpt.Is the first approach feasible? If so, how?
What about the second approach? By reading the documentation, I suppose that I have to write a
ParallelModuleand, somehow, access Frontmatter values for each document. If so, how?daveaglick commentedon Feb 13, 2023
The
titletoTitleone is easy - metadata keys in Statiq are case-insensitive so no action needed :)Publishedis a little trickier, it's built into Statiq Web a little bit, so even if your local copy of the theme were updated, it wouldn't quite be the same. That's not to say Statiq couldn't be adapted to useCreatedinstead - it wouldn't be too tough to change the theme and add/replace the functionality in Statiq Web that looks forPublishedto look forCreatedinstead, but I don't think it's necessary. The easiest solution would just be to use something like EditPad that has a global file-based search-and-replace to find and replace all the instances ofcreated:withPublished:in Markdown files. An alternative solution if you don't want to change the Markdown files would be to use directory metadata to define a computed value for all files that maps one to the other:Leadcan be handled the same way asPublishedthough you've got another option there sinceLeadisn't part of Statiq Web at all, just this theme. That means you could also search the theme files for any mention ofLeadand replace it there in your local copy of the theme withExcerptif you like "excerpt" better.As for setting the destination path, note that it's file-specific (as opposed to URL-like as in your example front matter). In other words, you've need to set something like
/blog/inject-and-test-datetime-dependency.html. Converting an.htmlfile to an extensionless URL is the concern of the web host so Statiq doesn't make any assumptions there. Note that it's required if the source files are in a similar path structure either. For example, if Markdown file for this post is at/blog/inject-and-test-datetime-dependency.mdthen it'll end up with a destination path of/blog/inject-and-test-datetime-dependency.htmlautomatically and you should delete thepathfront matter entirely. If you still want to define a hard-coded path in front matter, you can do so as a normal YAML string and Statiq will convert it to aDestinationPathautomatically (the more complex computed value in that example is only if you need the help of code to figure out the path):The featured image is entirely a function of the theme as well, and different themes will have different support for something like that. As for CleanBlog, it uses the
Imagemetadata value, so that transition fromfeaturedImagetoImageswill be the same as for the others. I would consider a global search-and-replace first, then something like directory metadata and a computed value to map from the old key if that's not acceptible.daveaglick commentedon Feb 13, 2023
Either could work! One of the main tenants of Statiq is flexibility and extensibility so there's tons of ways to do any given thing. A front matter mapping module hadn't even occurred to me, but it's certainly an option, if not probably a bit more than you need for this (but I like the enthusiasm!).
Hopefully the computed metadata approach in a directory metadata file I mentioned above works for you to test things out quickly. If it doesn't let me know and we'll circle back around.
bellons91 commentedon Feb 13, 2023
Since I have ~150 blog posts, I opted for the _directory.yml mapping.
I successfully managed the porting of Title and Lead (even though, in the homepage, the Lead content appears twice - see below - and I don't know if it's a wrong configuration on my side or it is actually a feature of the theme)
bellons91 commentedon Feb 13, 2023
Now I can tackle the two main issues: URL mapping and Images.
My current structure is
-/articles
---/2023
------/article folder
--------/article.md
--------/cover.png
--------/another_image.png
Does it mean that I have to transform the whole structure of my blog to keep the old format?
Or maybe I can do something like
(which is currently not working)
daveaglick commentedon Mar 13, 2023
How is this going? I kind of lost sync after the last round of comments... Have you been successful?