Custom listing template and nested listings

[nurfatimaj]

Description

Hi!

I am working on my academic CV website and would like to include a list of events where a given project has been presented. Inside the project page I wanted to use document listings. Suppose the project page is in project-A/index.qmd and I have presentations in project-A/presentations/event-1/index.qmd and project-A/presentations/event-2/index.qmd and etc.

So, in project-A/index.qmd I can include the following

listing:
    id: presentation
    template: custom.ejs
    contents: presentations/

This shows me the listing of all the presentations in the format I want (from custom.ejs file) in the project page.

Now, I also want to have a listing of all research projects I do. So, let's say I have research.qmd file at the top level of the website folder. It is also a listing:

title: "Research"
listing:
  contents: 
    - '.'
    - '!presentations/'
  type: custom
  template: research_list.ejs

The issue is that I don't know how to make my research_list.ejs evaluate the listing inside the project pages to loop over all presentations for each paper.

Simplified version of my research_list.ejs file looks like this:

```{=html}
<div class="list">
  <% for (const item of items) { %>
    <div class="publication" <%= metadataAttrs(item) %>>
      <h5 class="listing-title"><a href="<%- item.path %>"><%- item.title %></a></h5>

      <% if (item.listing) { %>
        <% if (item.listing.contents != "") { %>
          <ul class="publication-presentations">
            <% for (const presentation of item.listing.contents) { %>
              <li><a href="<%- presentation.path %>"><%- presentation.title %></a> (<%- date.toLocaleString('en-GB', {month: 'long', year: 'numeric' }) %>)</li>
            <% } %>
          </ul>
        <% } %>
      <% } %>
    </div>
  <% } %>
</div>

But the loop over item.listing.contents object does not do what I want it to do. It literally loops over characters in "presentations/" (from the listing contents in the project page). Is there any way to let research_list.ejs know that item.listing refers to the listing and that it should evaluate that part to generate an actual array of presentation objects?

Right now I am making this all work by using Metadata Listings. So, the listing on the project page looks like this

listing: 
  id: presentations
  type: custom
  template: custom.ejs
  contents: 
    - name: Event 1
      link: presentations/event-1/index.qmd
      date: October 24, 2024
    - name: Event 2
       link: presentations/event-2/index.qmd
       date: December 1, 2024

so then I get presentation lists both inside project page and research listing page. But it would be slightly easier if I could just use usual listing tools without having to remember to type them into contents.

Thank you!

[mcanouil]

I don't think you can nest the listing like that in contents but the documents listed can be listings.

This being said, because you only shared snippets of code, it's hard to have concrete suggestion as we can't try ourselves your setup.
Could you share a small reproducible setup as a Git repository that we can close?