frontmatter
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frontmatter is a common way to include metadata in plain text. Currently the most seen method is including YAML in front of Markdown content, but some document formats offer built-in support for front matter.
Support
- most static generators support a variety of front matter; this is most commonly YAML, but some accept TOML or JSON.
- Github displays front matter in Markdown files in a table: Hugo example
IndieWeb Examples
Aaron Parecki
p3k stores all posts as files on disk with frontmatter that contains the metadata for the post, and the post content below. p3k#File_Format
The top-level properties of the frontmatter are mostly proprietary to p3k, and then there is a properties object that contains microformats2 vocabulary values for the post, such as category, syndication and more.
---
published: "2017-04-15T18:23:00-07:00"
type: entry
content-type: text/plain
client_id: https://ownyourgram.com
properties:
category: indieweb
location:
type:
- h-card
properties:
name: Migration Brewing Company
latitude: 45.526300
longitude: -122.636451
locality: Portland
region: Oregon
country-name: USA
syndication: https://www.instagram.com/p/BS7XoRCANxF/
photo: photo.jpg
p3k-channel:
- photos
- primary
...
Scheming. #indieweb
Brian Tremblay
Brian Tremblay's personal website stores posts in markdown files with front matter. Some of the front matter items map to microformats, and thus use microformats names for ease of understanding:
---
title: Fern Valley
location:
name: U.S. National Arboretum
adr:
locality: Washington
region: D.C.
...
---
...
Software Examples
asciidoc
asciidoc has a built-in support for metadata. While this metadata is usually minimal, it is OK to extend it with custom variables. It does not seem to support structured data, making it's use a little limited, but since it's part of the format, it's not as alien as the more common methods.
AsciiDoc User Guide =================== Stuart Rackham <srackham@gmail.com> :Author Initials: SJR :toc: :icons: :numbered: :website: http://asciidoc.org/
Jekyll
--- layout: post title: Blogging Like a Hacker permalink: https://domain.com/post category: Meta excerpt: Hello World! ---
Hugo
Hugo supports YAML, TOML, and JSON, but they need to be separated by different separators. This is a YAML example.
--- title: "spf13-vim 3.0 release and new website" description: "spf13-vim is a cross platform distribution of vim plugins and resources for Vim." tags: [ ".vimrc", "plugins", "spf13-vim", "vim" ] lastmod: 2015-12-23 date: "2012-04-06" categories: - "Development" - "VIM" slug: "spf13-vim-3-0-release-and-new-website" ---
Grav
---
title: Title of my Page
slug: my-page-slug
menu: My Page
date: 01/01/2014 3:14pm
published: true
redirect: '/some/custom/route'
template: custom
taxonomy:
category: blog
tag: [sample, demo, grav]
routes:
default: '/my/example/page'
canonical: '/canonical/url/alias'
aliases:
- '/some/other/route'
- '/can-be-any-valid-slug'
author:
name: Sandy Johnson
twitter: @sandyjohnson
bio: Sandy is a freelance journalist and author of several publications on open source CMS platforms.
---
Obsidian
Obsidian calls its frontmatter "properties". These can be written in YAML or JSON format, and can be used as a key-value store for page metadata that can be referenced by custom plugins. This includes tags.
While an unlimited number of any arbitrary metadata names and values can be added, Obsidian contains special support for the following default defined properties:
--- tags: - tag one - tag two aliases: - Alternate page name one - Alternate page name two cssclass: class-name-to-apply-to-text ---
This metadata can be searched in Obsidian. For example, a search for [status:Deprecated] will return all pages where the frontmatter property status has been set to Deprecated.
Pelican
Pelican is not following the usual method: it does not have the common separators.
reStructuredText
My super title ############## :date: 2010-10-03 10:20 :modified: 2010-10-04 18:40 :tags: thats, awesome :category: yeah :slug: my-super-post :authors: Alexis Metaireau, Conan Doyle :summary: Short version for index and feeds
Markdown
Title: My super title Date: 2010-12-03 10:20 Modified: 2010-12-05 19:30 Category: Python Tags: pelican, publishing Slug: my-super-post Authors: Alexis Metaireau, Conan Doyle Summary: Short version for index and feeds
Criticism
No common set of basic variables
None of the current static generators share the same keywords or syntax for even the most common variables, such as author, tags, publish date; with the exception of "title", though the case might vary here as well. (Title vs title ) - 2016-08-19 petermolnar
Most parsers are not aware of it
Since it's an alien format inside another format (YAML in Markdown most commonly ), therefore regular Markdown parsers are unaware of it and thus it will not be parsed accordingly. pandoc is an exception. - 2016-08-19 petermolnar