jekyll-plugin-include

A Jekyll liquid tag plugin which allows includes directly from plugins' _include directories, with optional ability to override with files present in site includes_dir (if they exist).

Normally, Jekyll's include tag can only search for files in the site's single configured includes directory (and that of the theme plugin, if it using one). That means that if a plugin wants to provide you with a template/fragment via includes, the best it can do is ask you to copy it into your own repo manually.

This plugin then makes it easy to use includes that ship with a plugin directly from a plugin. And if a modified version of the file is provided in the site's own includes directory, it can intelligently use that one instead!

And for plugin developers, this provides a way to ship and use includes without leaning on the user to manage the unmodified files themselves.

Requirements

  • Jekyll static site generator
  • A build process that runs somewhere other than Github pages (as this is a custom plugin)

Installation

You can add a Rubygems-hosted Jekyll plugin (like this one) to your site by either adding adding it to your _config or to your Gemfile. you can also use it in your own gem-based plugin by adding it to your gemspec.

Add to the jekyll_plugins group in your Gemfile.

group :jekyll_plugins do
  gem "jekyll-plugin-include"
end

Jekyll _config install

Add it to the array plugins in your _config.yml:

plugins:
  - jekyll-plugin-include

For use in your own gem-based plugin (gemspec)

Add something like this to your gemspec

spec.add_runtime_dependency "jekyll-plugin-include", ">= 0.1.0"

Usage

Note: quotes are required for arguments with spaces, and whitespace after the : is acceptable

This plugin provides a single custom Jekyll Liquid tag which provides enhanced include-like functionality, so it will look a lot like the standard include.

In this example with the jekyll-podcast plugin, this will function much like Jekyll's normal include (inserting the rendered contents of includefile.html), but will look in the _includes directory of the specified plugin if it doesn't find the file in the site's configured includes directory.

{% plugin_include plugin:"jekyll-podcast" file: "podcast_feed_episode_content_encoded.html" %}

It is also possible to force this plugin to skip the site's configured includes directory completely and look exclusively in the plugin's _includes directory with the allow_override parameter:

{% plugin_include plugin:"jekyll-podcast" file: "podcast_feed_misc.xml" allow_override: false %}

Include parameters

Any parameters passed to the include besides _plugin and _file will be passed through as-is and will be available as include.param_name in the file.

Testing

  • syntax: a .rubocop.yml is provided. rubocop lib/jekyll/plugin-include.rb

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/decipher-media/jekyll-plugin-include.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Credits

By Christopher Peterson for Decipher Media.