more generic composition

[waynedpj]

ahoy,

first, thanks for the refactor and all this work on Assemble. this helper was the thing that caught my eye and made me give Assemble a try. and your push this morning fixed a bug i was encountering last night when i finally got a chance to try this helper. thanks again ;)

so far the compose helper seems to work as advertised, but i am having a hard time using it in a layout and making in generic enough to work with whatever uses that layout.

here is a simplified version of my setup:

├── releases
│   ├── releases.yaml
│   ├── A
│   │   ├── tracks
│   │   │   ├── 1
│   │   │   │   ├── index.html
│   │   │   │   └── info.yaml
│   │   │   └── 2
│   │   │       ├── index.html
│   │   │       └── info.yaml
│   │   └── A.yaml
│   └── B
│       ├── tracks
│       │   ├── 1
│       │   │   ├── index.html
│       │   │   └── info.yaml
│       │   ├── 2
│       │   │   ├── index.html
│       │   │   └── info.yaml
│       │   ├── 3
│       │   │   ├── index.html
│       │   │   └── info.yaml
│       │   └── 4
│       │       ├── index.html
│       │       └── info.yaml
│       └── B.yaml
└── pages
    ├── about.html
    └── news.html

i am trying to use Assemble to view the collections that are already modeled by the directory structure i.e. the releases (AKA albums) collection has 2 elements A and B, each release collection element has a sub collection tracks which contain the tracks of the release, and pages has simple content pages.

i am trying to use this compose helper in a layout for a release to pull in the track contents in the subdirectory tracks of the release collection. so far i have been unable to set the cwd option for each release folder differently unless i specify each release separately in the global Assemble options.

what i am trying overall to achieve is to have the directory structure be the configuration, allowing new releases to simply be created by making a new directory and adding content in the correct place, instead of explicitly naming everything in the global Assemble config.

i am new to Assemble and perhaps there is another way to do this, or this is not a supported use case at this time. any advice would be appreciated.

thanks again.

[jonschlinkert]

It think this is doable, but it would be a lot easier to explain just by changing some code. Is this repo publicly available, or is there any chance you could put it up somewhere (or even a reduced test case) so we can collaborate on getting it working for you?

[jonschlinkert]

@doowb do you have any thoughts on how we can accomplish this? I like the use case

[waynedpj]

my project is a mess right now as i have been hacking all kinds of things together trying to get this "directory structure as collection configuration" setup working. however, i will either clean it or make a simplified test case repo and get that posted soon.

thanks again.

[jonschlinkert]

Actually, you know what might work... we could allow cwd to be a function, so you could pass in the dirname of each collection as cwd or something like that. would still be good to have something to test against, but this might be a good route to consider

[doowb]

I can take a look. I don't have any ideas off the top of my head, but a reduced test case repo would be helpful.
Also, I just want to clarify something about the collections. When you say collections, you added those to the assemble.options.collections option in the gruntfile and have yaml frontmatter in each "page" that would tell what collection it's part of, correct?

[waynedpj]

@doowb @jonschlinkert working on a simplified test case repo as we speak .. my project is a bit in tatters and i am very new to git/etc.. thanks for your patience.

@doowb yes, i added the collections to assemble.options.collections but i did not add YFM indicating the collection to each page. i assumed that the collection's file directive (i.e. the target inside the assemble task) would indicate the collection's content. e.g. (this is from a YAML file that is loaded into the assemble config object:

releases:
  options:
    compose:
      cwd: <%= project.src %>/root/releases
  files:
    - expand: true
      cwd: <%= project.src %>/root/releases
      src:
        - "*/*.html"
      dest: <%= project.stage %>/releases

thus this would indicate that the releases collection contains any */*.html files in <%= project.src %>/root/releases? part of this i imagine is that i am understanding collections in assemble.

however, what i am going for is the ability to define collections by the directory structure (and possibly YAML/YFM data) instead of adding an explicit directive for each collection inside the Gruntfile. this would allow one to add more items (in this case a new release) to a collection simply by creating the folder and content in the appropriate location (i.e. as a sub directory of releases). maybe i need to create a plugin or helper to accomplish this?

will get that test repo up soon.

thanks.

[doowb]

Okay, looking at that releases config, you'll be picking up all of the html files in the tracks folders.

From the main post, it looks like you're trying to build a list of "index" pages for each release and each "index" page will contain the content of the tracks/#/index.html. I'm I correct in this?

Are you also wanting to render out each individual tracks/#/index.html page? I have some ideas around this and I think it would require adding some pages to the releases/{letter} folder with the collection name in them.

[waynedpj]

From the main post, it looks like you're trying to build a list of "index" pages for each release and each "index" page will contain the content of the tracks/#/index.html. I'm I correct in this?

bingo. a release (AKA album) is basically an index page for the tracks in its release-name/tracks sub directory. i was attempting to use this handlebars-helper-compose to do the pulling in of each track's index.html page, along with any data files, listed in each track sub directory. then i am using that data+content to build the index or track list in the release's index.html.

Are you also wanting to render out each individual tracks/#/index.html page? I have some ideas around this and I think it would require adding some pages to the releases/{letter} folder with the collection name in them.

yes, this is the other issue: each track's index.html page will need to be rendered as well. basically the tracks sub directory of a release is another collection or sub collection. i would like to define a generic layout for any tracks sub collection (much like i can do with releases) and have that applied to any tracks sub collection of any release. i figure this may take some helper/plugin help.

thanks.

[waynedpj]

OK, thanks for your patience and help so far. i created a simple repo to hopefully demonstrate what i am trying to do:

https://github.com/waynedpj/Assemble-releases

all the config and data is in the Gruntfile.js to keep things simple. i am unsure about to specify the tracks sub collection and left that out of the Gruntfile.js for now.

we can consider A and B each to be a release in the releases collection. for each release, the tracks sub directory holds the tracks sub collection that represents the track items that make up this release.

my goals are:

1. define a releases collection; each release may have a tracks sub directory; the content of each track in a tracks sub directory can be pulled into the release's index.html on demand and in a certain order (e.g. via handlebars-helper-compose)
2. keep the tracks ignorant of which release they are a part of; that is decided by which release they are a sub directory of (i.e. avoid hard coding the release inside the track's index.html)
3. if possible, allow the directory hierarchy to specify the configuration/relationships of collections and sub collections to avoid having to list specific collections in Gruntfile.js. not sure if this is possible at all in current Assemble.

thanks again.

[doowb]

K. I think it looks close and we should just have to add some YFM to the index.html files in each release and update the compose src to use the YFM value.

[doowb]

Made the changes to the show rendering the tracks inside the releases' index.html. Rendering the tracks themselves should be just running assemble normally.

[doowb]

Hope this helps

[bludrop]

Hi @waynedpj (and everyone else),

First, I recognized your use case and setup from a ruhoh discussion. Just curious- what made you look at/move to assemble? (this may be a discussion for a different venue)

Second, my setup is a little similar to yours, so I thought I'd share. I'm trying to create a magazine archive consisting of issues and articles. Here is the directory structure I am using:

├── index.hbs
├── issues
│   ├── 1
│   │   ├── article-title.md
│   │   ├── index.hbs
│   │   └── intro.md
│   └── 2
│       ├── article-title.md
│       ├── index.hbs
│       └── intro.md

/index.hbs is the list of issues. The metadata is mostly in the YFM. You can view the repo here: https://github.com/bludrop/ptmag-archive

To display the correct articles on the issue's index page, I am using {{#is ../../../issue issue }}. This is matching the issue number in the YFM of issue's index.hbs to the issue number in the YFM of the article.md. I guess it could be better if the {{compose}} helper was aware that they were in the same folder...

Here is the gruntfile:

      pages: {
        options: {
          layout: 'page.hbs',
        },
        expand: true,
        cwd: '<%= build.src %>/',
        src: ['*.hbs','!_*/**','!index.hbs'],
        dest: '<%= build.out %>/'
      },
       issues: {
        options: {
          layout: 'issue.hbs',
        },
        expand: true,
        cwd: '<%= build.src %>/issues/',
        src: ['../index.hbs','**/index.hbs','!_*/**'], //only do index.hbs
        dest: '<%= build.out %>/issues/'
      },
        articles: {
        options: {
          layout: 'article.hbs'
        },
        expand: true,
        cwd: '<%= build.src %>/issues/',
        src: ['**/*.md','!**/intro.md'],
        dest: '<%= build.out %>/issues/'
      }

I am also new to this—open to comments, suggestions, etc...

[waynedpj]

Hope this helps

definitely helps @doowb thanks so much. i made some comments on the commit but i realize that i should have put them here. copying+pasting ..

thank you very much for the quick help. it works as expected with both releases.

i played with this in my project and was able to get it a little more generic by placing a release.yaml file in the releases folder above A and B and in that file i placed:

# setup default properties for releases
tracksPath: <%= title %>/tracks/**/*.html

which sets the tracksPath property to the current release's title + the standard tracks glob which works. one odd thing: i tried to use dirname instead of title but dirname was always undefined?

so in my layout for releases i now have {{compose src=release.tracksPath}} and for each release it pulls in the correct subdirectory. basically this release.yaml acts like a default value for tracksPath that all releases can use. come to think of it, i guess i could also put tracksPath in the collection config? that does not seem to work either.

anyway, i have a few follow ups that i will post in the original thread once i get my head around this a bit more. thanks again to you and @jonschlinkert for the help. your solution in particular inspired some "a ha!" moments in me once i figured out how it worked.

peace

[waynedpj]

Hi @waynedpj (and everyone else),

ahoy @bludrop .. thanks for taking the time to post your setup, i appreciate it.

First, I recognized your use case and setup from a ruhoh discussion. Just curious- what made you look at/move to assemble? (this may be a discussion for a different venue)

sure, no worries. i really like Ruhoh and Ruby in general, but Ruhoh seems like it is going through a major overhaul and i got stuck in a few places with the current version, particularly with sub collections as sub directories. of course, if i was a Ruby programmer i could have coded my way out of it, but unfortunately i am not. i also have a deadline for getting this site done and so here i am trying out Assemble which is very nice. also, due to its Grunt integration, i found lots of automated tasks which turned out to be useful as this site has lots of graphics that need to be tamed. as always, different tools for different tasks. however, the new Silly stuff that the next Ruhoh is based on looks pretty neat-o.

I am also new to this—open to comments, suggestions, etc...

thanks again for sharing your setup. it looks like you are ahead of me with understanding Assemble in general, and particularly collections. they are pretty powerful and i am just starting to get the hang of them. i am always getting stuck on thinking that the directory hierarchy has all the info for defining collections and i forget about the Gruntfile.js config. however, now my config is starting to look like yours now, especially after this issue.

coming from Ruhoh/Mustache, i also forget about all these powerful helpers. in particular, i am interested how you are using {{compose}} with {{is}} .. though it may take me some time to sort it out.

thanks again.