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Documentation Configuration

Variables

Bridgetown traverses your site looking for files to process. Any files with front matter are subject to processing. For each of these files, Bridgetown makes a variety of data available via the Liquid template language. The following is a reference of the available data.

Global Variables #

Variable Description

site

Site wide information + configuration settings from bridgetown.config.yml. See below for details.

resource

Resource front matter and other content. Custom variables set via the front matter will be available here. See below for details.

layout

Layout specific information + the front matter. Custom variables set via front matter in layouts will be available here.

content

In layout files, the rendered content of the resource being wrapped. Not defined in resource files themselves.

Site Variables #

Variable Description

site.time

The current time (when you run the bridgetown command).

site.resources

A list of all resources (from pages, posts and other collections).

site.static_files

A list of all static files (i.e. files not processed by Bridgetown's converters or the Liquid renderer). Each file has five properties: path, modified_time, name, basename and extname.

site.collections

A list of all the collections (including posts).

site.data

A list containing the data loaded from the YAML files located in the _data directory.

site.categories.CATEGORY

The list of all resources in category CATEGORY.

site.tags.TAG

The list of all resources with tag TAG.

site.url

Contains the url of your site as it is configured in the bridgetown.config.yml. For example, if you have url: http://mysite.com in your configuration file, then it will be accessible in Liquid as site.url. For the development environment there is an exception: site.url will be set to the value of host, port, and SSL-related options. This defaults to url: http://localhost:4000.

site.metadata

You can put metadata variables in _data/site_metadata.yml so they'll be easy to access and will regenerate pages when changed. This is a good place to put <head> content like site title, description, icon, social media handles, etc. Then you can reference {{ site.metadata.title }}, etc. in your Liquid templates.

site.[CONFIGURATION_DATA]

All the variables set via the command line and your bridgetown.config.yml are available through the site variable. For example, if you have foo: bar in your configuration file, then it will be accessible in Liquid as site.foo. Bridgetown does not parse changes to bridgetown.config.yml in watch mode, you must restart Bridgetown to see changes to variables.

Resource Variables #

Variable Description

resource.content

The content of the resource.

resource.summary

An excerpt of the resource from the configured summary service.

resource.relative_url

The URL of the resource without the domain, but with a leading slash, e.g. /2008/12/14/my-post/

resource.date

The Date assigned to the resource. This can be overridden in front matter by specifying a new date/time in the format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (assuming UTC), or YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS +/-TTTT (to specify a time zone using an offset from UTC. e.g. 2008-12-14 10:30:00 +0900).

resource.id

An identifier unique to the resource and its collection (useful in RSS feeds). e.g. repo://posts.collection/2021-10-05-my-post.md

resource.categories

The list of categories to which this post belongs, which can be specified in the front matter.

resource.collection

The collection to which this resource belongs. Information on collection variables here. If not part of a collection, nothing is returned.

resource.tags

The list of tags to which this post belongs. These can be specified in the front matter.

resource.relative_path

The path of the resource relative to the source folder.

resource.next

The next resource relative to the position of the current resource in its collection. Returns nil for the last entry.

resource.previous

The previous resource relative to the position of the current resource in its collection. Returns nil for the first entry.

Top Tip: Use Custom Front Matter

Any custom front matter that you specify will be available under resource. For example, if you specify custom_css: true in a resource’s front matter, that value will be available as resource.data.custom_css.

If you specify front matter in a layout, access that via layout. For example, if you specify class: full_page in a layout’s front matter, that value will be available as layout.data.class in the layout.

Dynamic Routes & SSR