Accessing Global Data File

[gabidombrowski]

I have a yaml data file at /src/_data/authors.yaml that includes a list of authors like this:

author-name:
  full_name: First Last
  display_name: Display Name
  avatar: avatar.jpg
  bio: "I am an author"

I also have a nunjucks template at /src/author.njk with the following.

---
layout: base
pagination:
  data: authors
  size: 1
  alias: author
permalink: /blog/authors/{{ author | slug }}/
---

<article>
  {{ authors | log }}
  {{ author | log }}
  {{ content | safe }}
</article>

The authors log at author.njk returns an empty object {} here and the author log only returns the author slug/key, "author-name" in this case. It looks like collections.authors is an empty array.

I need access to the specific authors entry in the yaml data file for this template.

[bobmonsour]

Looking at the 11ty docs on Global Data, it seems that only json files or javascript that returns data can be used this way. I'd suggest adding an authors.js file to your _data directory and add a script that returns the result of converting the YAML to json.

[gabidombrowski]

I've configured the custom file format for yaml as per this:

https://www.11ty.dev/docs/data-custom/

There are other places where the authors data is accessible.

[bobmonsour]

I wasn't aware of custom data. Thanks for educating me.

[ironnysh]

Hi @gabidombrowski, I think you need to loop over the collection with something like:

<ul>
{%- for author in authors %}
  <li>{{ author }}</li>
{% endfor -%}
</ul>

[bobmonsour]

I did some digging and testing and came up with the following to make pagination work with the YAML file (though I had to alter the YAML...see below.

First, I changed the YAML file to this:

- full_name: Gabi Dombrowski
  display_name: Gabi Dombrowski
  avatar: gabi_avatar.jpg
  bio: "I am one author"
- full_name: Bob Monsour
  display_name: Bob Monsour
  avatar: bob_avatar.jpg
  bio: "I am another author"

Then, as you noted, I added the following lines to the eleventy config file to support YAML as a custom data format:

import yaml from "js-yaml";

eleventyConfig.addDataExtension("yml, yaml", (contents) =>
  yaml.load(contents)
);

Then, in the authors.njk, I changed it to this:

---
layout: base.njk
pagination:
  data: authors
  size: 1
  alias: author
permalink: /blog/authors/{{ author.full_name | slugify }}/
---

<article>
  {{ author.full_name }}
  {{ author.bio }}
  {# add more here as needed #}
</article>

Hope this helps.

[gabidombrowski]

Turns out that the 11ty pagination returns keys by default. I'm not sure why I can't access the authors global data item, but this seems to at least give me the full author object, which is what I need...

In /src/author.njk, changed the frontmatter like so:

---
layout: base
pagination:
  data: authors
  size: 1
  alias: author
  resolve: values
permalink: blog/authors/{{ author.full_name | slugify }}/
---