pagemaster

jekyll plugin for generating markdown collection pages from .csv, .json, or .yml records

How?

pagemaster takes a specified .yml, .csv, or .json file from your _data folder and 'splits' each item into the front matter of an individually generated markdown page.

Why?

If you have a data set for a Jekyll collection (e.g. a CSV of page titles, image links, dates, tags, and so on), you can completely automate the generation of collection pages by running this plugin with it. And if each page in the collection uses the same custom layout, you can specify that layout in your _config.yml file and generate the look of the pages programatically.

Isn't this what Jekyll collections are for?

Kind of! pagemaster actually uses Jekyll collections, but gives you a lot more control and generates .md pages to root instead of .html pages to _site/.

Will it work with GitHub Pages?

Kind of! Because the pages are generated to root as markdown, you only need to run the plugin locally once. From there GH pages will do what it normally does with Jekyll sites: compile vanilla yaml and markdown to html. So GitHub won't run it, but it shouldn't need to.

To use

1. Add pagemaster to the :jekyll_plugins group of your Gemfile like so:

   group :jekyll_plugins do
     gem 'pagemaster'
   end
   

2. Run $ bundle install.
3. Add pagemaster as a plugin in _config.yml like so:

   plugins:
    - pagemaster
   

4. Set-up your collection(s) in _config.yml and add pagemaster variables. For example:

collections:
  writers:
    output: true
    source: writer-list.csv
    id_key: id
    layout: writer-profile-page
  scientists:
    output: true
    source: scientist-survey.json
    id_key: orcid
    layout: scientist-profile-page

4. Run $bundle exec jekyll pagemaster [collection-name], e.g. $bundle exec jekyll pagemaster writers scientists.

Results

For the writers example above, pagemaster will:

1. look for writer-list.csv in the _data directory,
2. make a new directory called _writers, and
3. generate a markdown page for each item in writer-list.csv, named after its id value and using the writer-profile-page.html layout.

For the scientists example above, pagemaster will:

1. look for scientist-survey.json in the _data directory,
2. make a new directory _scientists, and
3. generate a markdown page for each item in scientist-survey.json, named after its orcid value and using the scientist-profile-page.html layout.

+-- _config.yml
+-- _data
|   +-- writer-list.csv
+-- _writers
|   +-- 00001.md
|   +-- 00002.md
|   +-- 00003.md
|   +-- 00004.md
|   +-- 00005.md
|   +-- ...
+-- _layouts
|   +-- default.html
|   +-- writer-profile-page.html
|   +-- scientist-profile-page.html
+-- _scientists
|   +-- 0000-0002-1825-0097.md
|   +-- 0000-0002-1825-0098.md
|   +-- 0000-0002-1825-0099.md
|   +-- 0000-0002-1825-0100.md
|   +-- 0000-0002-1825-0101.md
|   +-- ..