[Proposal] Populate collection items from JSON or a remote API

[kawika-connell]

So I have recently taken an interest in JamStack, and I was wondering if Jigsaw supported this, and if not, if you guys would take interest in such a feature.

Ideally, Jigsaw would need to query an API at build time, and process the data as a collection.

I am considering implementing this myself as my first open source contribution.

[damiani]

Jigsaw doesn't support anything like this at the moment, but after digging into the concept of JamStack (something that's new to me), it's definitely a very intriguing idea. It might be worthwhile putting together a proof of concept, and sharing a little more the value that you envision and some possible use cases. We'd also have to refine the automated build process end of things, which is pretty bare-bones and outdated at the moment. There's an open PR on migrating from gulp to webpack, which I'm hoping to take another look at in the coming days.

[dweipert-3138720606]

@kawikaconnell
Just asked the same thing here #117. Of course I totally overlooked your issue just until after I posted mine.

[damiani]

Similar proposal was made on #117 :

Can I populate a collection with decoded JSON objects I get from a JSON REST API?

Each object should also generate a page, because they will be the most recent blog posts.
But not always, since there's another endpoint that just carries some links and their descriptions, so no single templates needed there.

So something like

<?php

return [
    'collections' => [
        'posts' => [
            'remote' => someFunctionReturningAPageOrFileObjectThatIsTreatedLikeAnActualFileAndGeneratesThatFile(),
            'path' => 'blog/{date|Y-m-d}/{filename}',
            'author' => 'Tighten Co.',
        ],
    ],
];

[damiani]

This feature has been implemented on #187. Any further discussion can take place on that PR.