Variables & helpers

When a page is rendering it has access to a set of variables and helper functions. They can be provided in three scopes, with lowest precednece first:

• Built in variables — provided by sitegen
• Site level variables — set in site.moon
• Page level variables — set in the page

The variables can be accessed depending on the page renderer used. In the Markdown and HTML renderers, the templating language cosmo is used. You can access variables by prefixing them with $:

{
  title: "Hello and welcome to the page"
  date: "June 5th, 2022"
}

<h1>$title</h1>
<h2 class="post_date">$date</h2>

<p>Hello!</p>

• Built in variables
• Built in functions
• $render
• $markdown
• $wrap
• $url_for
• $query_pages
• $query_page
• $neq
• $eq
• $if{cond}[[subtemplate]]
• $each{items, "name"}[[subtemplate]]
• $is_page{query_args}[[subtemplate]]
• Site variables
• Page variables

Built in variables

There are a few variables that are always available, here they are:

• $root — a relative path prefix that points back to the top level directory of your site. For example, if the current page is wwww/hello/world.html, the $root would be ../. This make it easy to built URLs to other pages without being concerned about where your page is being rendered to.
• $generate_date — a timestamp of when the page is being generated. Good for displaying on your page, and also adding to URLs of assets as a cache buster.

Plugins may also introduce variables, in addition to functions, that can be accessed from a page.

Built in functions

In addition to variables, there are a handful of built in functions that can be called from pages and templates. Cosmo provides syntax for calling functions. You still prefix their name with $ but you can pass arguments with {} and a subtemplate with [[]]. The examples below will demonstrate.

$render

Renders another template. Templates are searched relative to the directory where site.moon is located. Any of the page types supported by sitegen can be rendered.

<p>Here are my favorite links:</p>
$render{"favorite_links.md"}

$markdown

Renders markdown directly into the current page. This is useful when you have an HTML page that you'd like to insert some formatted text into easily:

Takes one argument, a string of markdown.

<div class="sidebar">
$markdown{[[
# Hello

* [Cool code][1]
* [Cool games][2]

[1]: http://leafo.net
[2]: http://itch.io
]]}
</div>

$wrap

$url_for

$query_pages

$query_page

Like $query_pages but will throw an error unless 1 page is returned from the query.

$neq

$eq

$if{cond}[[subtemplate]]

$each{items, "name"}[[subtemplate]]

Iterates through the array items executing the subtemplate each time. The current item is assigned to name within the subtemplate.

$is_page{query_args}[[subtemplate]]

Runs the subtemplate if if query_args matches the current page.

Site variables

Site variables are set in site.moon and apply to every page rendered. If a page variable happens to override the same name of a site variable, it does not affect other pages.

You can set a site variable by storing it on self in the site constructor function:

sitegen = require "sitegen"

sitegen.create =>
  @version = "1.2.3-alpha-gamma"
  add "index.html"

Inside your pages you can now access the variable using the appropriate syntax:

<p>Current version: <strong>$version</strong></p>

Page variables