Creating a Collection
Collection objects allow you to build multiple Pages from a single configuration. They are rendered using the site's collection decorator.
You can build a collection by defining Collection class object. You'll also need to provide a content_path that points to the page references for each page. By default, collections work with a directory of files. Each file will be used to build a page.
pages
├── about.md
├── contact.md
└── ideas.md
Each file can have differing information for each page. For example, the spiderman.md file could have the following information:
# content/heroes/spiderman.md
---
title: Spiderman
slug: spiderman
alias: Peter Parker
---
I'm a Photographer for the Daily Bugle. I'm also a superhero.
while hulk.md could have the following information:
# content/heroes/hulk.md
---
title: The Incredible Hulk
slug: hulk
alias: Bruce Banner
---
I'm a scientist. I'm also a superhero.
NOTE: For more information on how to build pages, see Creating a Page.
The collection would have all the information to parse all its pages the same. These could be attributes like the template or the Parser that is used to parse each page in the collection. The individual page attributes can be referenced in the template or used for sorting or other functions.
If you want to pass additional objects through the template context (see Jinja's Template Context), you can create a dictionary of additional attributes.
For example, if you want to send an attribute called some_value with a value of "42", you can assign the dictionary to a template_vars attribute within your Collection class, and it will be passed to the template through a collection attribute that contains the key:value pair ({"some_value: "42"}).
# app.py
from render_engine import Site, Collection
from render_engine.parsers.markdown import MarkdownPageParser
app = Site()
@app.collection()
class Heroes(Collection):
content_path = "content/heroes"
template = "heroes.html"
Parser = `MarkdownPageParser`
template_vars = {
"some_value": "42"
}
The value of 42 can be accessed in your template using {{collection.some_value}}.