Middleman product and category YAML data files

Question

Is it possible to iterate through a data file using tags and categories based on a product data file? E.g.:

# toys.yml
- name: Fire Truck
  id: 1
  description: Red
  category: Automobile
  url: toys/fire-truck
  tags: red, truck

- name: Freight Train
  id: 2
  description: Fast delivery mail
  url: toys/freight-train
  category: Train
  tags: freight, train, rail

I'm using Proxy pages to generate pages.

data.toys.each do |t|
  proxy toys.path, "toys.html", locals: { toy: t}, ignore: true
end

The index.html.erb template would be:

<div class="toys">
 <% data.toys.each do |t| %>
   <h1><%= t.name %></h1>
   <p><%= t.desription %></p>
   <span class="category"><%= t.category %></span> // I would like this to be linked to generate categories based on the toys.yml file
  <span class="tags"><%= t.tags %></span> // The same as category, generated tag pages based on the toys.yml
 <% end %>
</div>

How can I do this? Should I just create:

• Individual toy pages eg. firetruck.md and not worry about generating pages and using meta data as a way to create category and tag pages?
• Or, should I create a category.yml can populate it with the categories, is there a way to link it to toys.yml unique id?

I'm learning about static pages and wanted to know ways to implement this without building a db backed app.

Answer 1

You can create a category.html.erb file and proxy that so that you create a category page for each unique category in the toys.yml file

categories.each do |c|
  proxy "#{c}.html", "category.html", locals: { category: c, toys: data.toys}, ignore: true
end

As for how you get the list of categories, you can use standard ruby operations on the data.toys list e.g.

categories = data.toys.map {|t| t.category}.uniq

Tags would be similar but you would need to parse the comma separated list.

You can also build more complex data types or define your own Ruby Toy and Category classes which you then pass to the proxy call in the locals argument. This would allow you to for example, have category objects contain a list of toy objects which belong to that category. The ruby Enumerable group_by method would be useful in that case.