References between content files

[dotloadmovie]

Hi @Gottwik - really loving this project, great work. I'm using it to build a simple static blog and it's working great, however I was looking for some guidance on a question that's arisen

For each post I add I'd like to have a sections of "related content" at the bottom of the page. To avoid duplication of content ideally I'd be able to reference other content files inside the same generator - something like

{
title: 'article 1',
content: 'lorem ipsum dolor sit amet',
related: [
    {
      item: '@@article2'
    },
    {
      item: '@@article3'
    }
  ]
}

Currently I can access global items but not siblings. Is there any way you recommend of doing this? (I see potential issues with circular references of course...)

[Gottwik]

Thank you for a very good question, @dotloadmovie . I am glad you like enduro.js, I hope we can improve it together.

Yea, this can't be currently done easily, but I wish it was because it's a good idea ;-)

I created a sample for you: https://github.com/Gottwik/enduro_samples/tree/master/related_articles

The idea is to load the related articles using a custom handlebars helper. Veeery simple. Basically you just use enduro.api.flat.load('<path-to-your-file>') to fetch the context.

The template looks like this:

<h1>{{name}}</h1>
<p>{{text}}</p>
<h3>related articles:</h3>
<ul>
	{{#related_articles}}
		<li>{{name}}</li>
	{{/related_articles}}
</ul>

and the helper looks like this:

var Promise = require('bluebird')

enduro.templating_engine.registerHelper('related_articles', function (options) {

	// store the actual rendered html
	// alternativelly a each helper could be used
	var rendered_html = ''

	// store the promises to read related articles
	var related_article_promises = []

	// go throgh all relate articles and load them
	for (index in this.related_articles) {

		// store the related article
		var related_article = this.related_articles[index]

		// load the actual content of the article
		var related_article_promise = enduro.api.flat.load('/generators/article/' + related_article.related_article_id)
			.then((related_article_context) => {

				// generate the actual html code
				return options.fn(related_article_context)
			})
			.then((rendered_html_block) => {

				// add the html code together with the previous ones
				rendered_html += rendered_html_block
			})

		// add whole thing to a array of promises
		related_article_promises.push(related_article_promise)
	}

	// return whole html block upon reading all related articles
	return Promise.all(related_article_promises)
		.then(() => {
			return rendered_html
		})
})

Eeeh, it looks complicated, but it isn't, I promise!

Btw, the circular thing could be solved by a shallow globalizer: http://www.endurojs.com/docs/globalizer#shallow-globalizer

Let me know if this helps you, or if you had any other ideas on how to solve this.