VSCode Front Matter Helpers

     

Info: Extension is still in development, but can already be tested out.

This VSCode extension simplifies working with front matter of your markdown articles when using a static site generator like: Hugo, Jekyll, Hexo, NextJs, Gatsby, and many more... For example, with the extension you can keep a list of used tags, categories and add/remove them from your article.

Available commands:

Front Matter: Create <tag | category>

Creates a new <tag | category> and allows you to automatically include it into your post

Front Matter: Insert <tags | categories>

Inserts a selected <tags | categories> into the front matter of your article/post/...

Front Matter: Export all tags & categories to your settings

Export all the already used tags & categories in your articles/posts/... to your user settings

Front Matter: Remap or remove tag/category in all articles

This is commands helps you quickly update/remap or delete a tag or category in all your markdown files. You'll be asked to select the taxonomy type (tag or category), the old taxonomy value and the new one (leave the input field blank to remove the tag/category).

Info: Once the remapping/deleting process is completed. The taxonomy tags/categories will be updated in your user settings.

Front Matter: Set current date

Update the date property of the current article/post/... to the current date & time.

Optional: if you want, you can specify the format of the date property by adding your own preference in your settings. Settings key: frontMatter.taxonomy.dateFormat. Check date-fns formating for more information which patterns you can use.

Front Matter: Generate slug based on article title

Generates a clean slug for your article. It removes known stop words, punctuations, and special characters.

Example:

title: Just a sample page with a title
slug: sample-page-title

If you want, you can also specify a prefix and suffix which can be added to the slug. Use the following settings to do this: frontMatter.taxonomy.slugPrefix and frontMatter.taxonomy.slugSuffix. By default both options are not provided and will not add anything to the slug.

Info: At the moment only English stop words are supported.

Where is the data stored?

The tags and categories are stored in the project VSCode user settings. You can find them back under: .vscode/settings.json.

{
  "frontMatter.taxonomy.tags": [],
  "frontMatter.taxonomy.categories": []
}

Additional extension settings

The extension has more settings which allow you to further configure it to your needs. Here is a list of settings which you can set:

• frontMatter.taxonomy.frontMatterType
  • Specify which Front Matter language you want to use. The extension supports YAML (default) and TOML.

{
  "frontMatter.taxonomy.frontMatterType": "YAML"
}

• frontMatter.taxonomy.indentArrays
  • Specify if arrays in front matter are indented. Default: true. If you do not want to indent the array values, you can update it with the following setting change:

{
  "frontMatter.taxonomy.indentArrays": false
}

• frontMatter.taxonomy.noPropertyValueQuotes
  • Specify the property names of which you want to remove the quotes in the output value. Warning: only use this when you know what you are doing. If you want to for instance remove the quotes from the date property, you can add the following:

{
  "frontMatter.taxonomy.noPropertyValueQuotes": ["date"]
}

Usage

• Start by opening the command prompt:
  • Windows: ⇧+ctrl+P
  • Mac: ⇧+⌘+P
• Use one of the commands from above

Feedback / issues / ideas

Please submit them via creating an issue in the project repository: issue list.