Yemekhane (cafeteria menu) for NodeBB

A widget that shows the day's cafeteria menu on your forum: breakfast, lunch and dinner, with calories and prices. Built for Yaşar Forum (Yaşar University), but the menu format is plain JSON, so any cafeteria can use it.

• The three meals sit side by side, each with its serving hours. The current meal says "Now" while it is served and "Next" before it, using Istanbul time; after the last meal the widget moves to tomorrow's breakfast. Moving to a later day opens its breakfast unless the visitor picked a meal tab.
• Arrows move between days. Other months load on demand.
• Main dishes stand out, and the side dishes served every day are grouped into one line.
• The set menu price and the à la carte prices are shown in their own box.
• On narrow screens the meals turn into tabs.
• The first view is rendered on the server, so nothing jumps when the page loads.
• Light and dark themes, Turkish and English.
• Optionally takes the place of the category list on the home page. /categories keeps the list.

Requires NodeBB 4.15 or later.

Installation

npm install nodebb-plugin-yemekhane

Activate the plugin in the ACP, then rebuild and restart NodeBB.

Setup

1. Open ACP → Plugins → Yemekhane and upload a month's menu as a JSON file.
2. In ACP → Extend → Widgets, drag the Yemekhane widget into an area. The header area of the categories template works well.
3. Widget options:
   • Show on the home page only. When the home page is the category list, / and /categories share one template. This keeps the widget off /categories.
   • Hide the category list on the home page. The menu takes the list's place on /.
   • Hide breakfast and Hide prices.

When no menu has been uploaded yet, the widget renders nothing.

Meal hours

Set them on the same ACP page. The defaults come from Yaşar University's 2025-2026 student handbook: breakfast 07:00–10:00, lunch 12:00–14:00, dinner 18:30–20:30. Each meal must start before it ends, and meals must not overlap.

Monthly menu from a PDF

tools/pdf2json.py converts the monthly PDF published by SMC Catering (the format used at Yaşar University) into the JSON below. It needs Python 3.8+ and poppler's pdftotext 22 or later.

python3 tools/pdf2json.py yemek-liste.pdf > 2026-10.json

The script finds the lunch, dinner and dormitory breakfast pages by their titles. It reads each day's column, matches every calorie value to the dish on the same line and fixes known typos in the source. Warnings go to stderr. Always look over the result before uploading.

JSON format

{
  "ay": "2026-09",
  "kaynak": "https://www.yasar.edu.tr/yemek-liste.pdf",
  "etiketler": { "kahvalti": "Yurt" },
  "fiyat": {
    "set": "202,50 TL",
    "cesit": 4,
    "liste": [["Çorba", "56,50 TL"], ["Ana yemek", "113,00 TL"]],
    "notlar": ["Vegan seçenek de var."]
  },
  "gunler": {
    "2026-09-01": {
      "kahvalti": [{ "ad": "Beyaz Peynir", "kcal": 160, "tur": "yan" }],
      "ogle": [
        { "ad": "Şehriye Çorbası", "kcal": 180, "tur": "corba" },
        { "ad": "Piliç Pirzola + Patates Cips", "kcal": 320, "tur": "ana" },
        { "ad": "Yoğurt/Ayran", "kcal": "120/116", "tur": "sabit" }
      ],
      "aksam": []
    }
  }
}

Field	Meaning
ay	Month, YYYY-MM. Required.
gunler	Days of that month, YYYY-MM-DD → meals. Each meal is kahvalti, ogle or aksam. Required.
ad	Dish name, up to 120 characters.
kcal	A number, a text like "120/116", or null.
tur	corba (soup), ana (main, shown bold), yan (side), tatli (dessert), salata (salad) or sabit (served every day, grouped into the "Also served" line).
kaynak	Link to the original menu, shown as "Monthly menu (PDF)".
etiketler	A small tag next to a meal's name, for example "Yurt" (dormitory) for breakfast.
fiyat	Set menu price, how many items it includes, à la carte prices and notes.

examples/2026-09.json is a complete month.

API

Method	Route	Access
GET	/api/v3/plugins/yemekhane/aylar/:ay	Everyone
PUT	/api/v3/plugins/yemekhane/aylar/:ay (JSON body)	Administrators
DELETE	/api/v3/plugins/yemekhane/aylar/:ay	Administrators
PUT	/api/v3/plugins/yemekhane/saatler ({ "kahvalti": { "from": "07:00", "to": "10:00" }, … })	Administrators

Uploads are validated. Unknown fields are dropped, and errors say which day or dish is wrong.

Development

npm install
npm test
npm run lint

License

MIT. Icons are from Lucide (ISC).