Allow subdirectories in _data

[rdumont]

Fixes #2082 - Support subdirectories in _data.

Subdirectories in the _data folder will also be scanned for .yaml, .yml and .json files, recursively. For more details, see the added Cucumber scenario and the examples below:

Using the following files:

_data/categories/dairy.yaml     => name: Dairy Products
_data/categories/spices.yaml    => name: Spices

Will result in:

categories:
  dairy:
    name: Dairy Products
  spices:
    name: Spices

[doktorbro]

Great. Can you please add a note to the documentation in /site/docs/datafiles.md?

[parkr]

What if I have a file _data/categories.yml that contains the value dairy: foobar? How is that handled?

[rdumont]

Because of how I list the entries in a directory (see line 213 of site.rb), directories will always override whatever is read from a file with the same name.

But this is due to a small detail in implementation. I think the behavior for such case should be considered unpredictable and people should be discouraged to name files the same as sub-directories. Just the same as they shouldn't have a .json and a .yaml with the same name.

[parkr]

Ok. Can you please add a test for this?

[rdumont]

Done 😃

[rdumont]

I'm sorry, I accidentally clicked the close button.

[parkr]

Thanks for adding the docs. Can you please sprinkle in subdirectories in examples above the one you gave so it's more prominent? The entire Data Files doc page may require reworking.

[rdumont]

@parkr Sorry, I didn't get what you meant by sprinkling in subdirectories. But yeah, I agree that with this change the entire Data Files doc page would greatly benefit from some rework.

[parkr]

Sorry, I didn't get what you meant by sprinkling in subdirectories

I just meant showing subdirectories and flat files shown side-by-side in the other examples on the page. :)

@benbalter Do you have any major thoughts on this?

[doktorbro]

Can’t wait to use it.

[parkr]

Jekyll 2.1 should be out early next week!

[rdumont]

Great, thanks! I'll give some thought about the doc page too, so that we can improve it.

[fkostadinov]

I fail to run the given example for subdirectories. I am running Jekyll 2.1.0 on Windows 7 with the exact setup given here: http://jekyllrb.com/docs/datafiles/. Whereas the first example with a single members.yml works perfectly fine, the second example with multiple files in a subdirectory does not. Contents read out with {% for org in site.data.orgs %} and {{ org.name }} does not show anything. Interestingly, looping over all files in the subdirectory seems to recognize there are 2 files, because two entries are displayed. Is there anything missing in the examples (e.g. additional setup required in _config.yml, runtime arguments given to jekyll etc.)? Can someone please confirm the example works as given or provide an updated example? Thanks.

[parkr]

@fkastadinov You're right! The example is wrong – great catch. The way to remedy it is to say instead of org, org[1]. When Liquid iterates over Hashes (which is what site.data.orgs is for this subdir), it gets an array that looks like this:

[
["doeorg", {"username"=>"doeorg", "name"=>"Doe Org", "members"=>[{"name"=>"John Doe", "github"=>"jdoe"}]}],
["jekyll", {"username"=>"jekyll", "name"=>"Jekyll", "members"=>[{"name"=>"Tom Preston-Werner", "github"=>"mojombo"}, {"name"=>"Parker Moore", "github"=>"parkr"}]}]
]

org[0] is the key (sanitized filename), and org[1] is the value (the file's data).

[fkostadinov]

@parkr: Thanks, now everything works.

[parkr]

@fkostadinov Can you please confirm that the change made in e8e245e works?

[fkostadinov]

@parkr: Yes, I tried the updated example, and it works! Perhaps you could also mention quickly that in the subdirectory example files are read out as key/value pairs and that org_hash[0] contains the filename (without ending) and org[1] the file's contents. This would help clarify things for an inexperienced user.