Table Of Contents
Recently I’ve updated my blog from jekyll to Hugo. The process was easy enough, but I did have to change some things in the frontmatter of the content.
A simple Google search was all I needed to find a python parser for YAML frontmatter. Here is how I did it:
Install Python-Frontmatter
Simply run
sudo pip install python-frontmatter
Using Python-Frontmatter
Example 1: Add new values to frontmatter
Once installed, it is easy to use. Let’s see as an example one of the problems I faced. In Jekyll I was the fall back author for all posts that did not have one defined in its frontmatter, but in Hugo I need to specify the author for every post written. To accomplish this, I wrote the following script:
import frontmatter
import io
from os.path import basename, splitext
import glob
# Where are the files to modify
path = "en/*.markdown"
# Loop through all files
for fname in glob.glob(path):
with io.open(fname, 'r') as f:
# Parse file's front matter
post = frontmatter.load(f)
if post.get('author') == None:
post['author'] = "alex"
# Save the modified file
newfile = io.open(fname, 'w', encoding='utf8')
frontmatter.dump(post, newfile)
newfile.close()
That’s it!, so simple. Let’s see another example
Example 2: Modify existing values in frontmatter
In this case, I had two frontmatter variables, mainclass and categories. I wanted to include the value of mainclass into categories, and keep all the current categories of categories. Here is the script:
for fname in glob.glob(path):
with io.open(fname, 'r') as f:
post = frontmatter.load(f)
# If no categories exists, create one with the value of mainclass
if post.get('categories') == None:
post['categories'] = [post['mainclass']]
print(post['categories'])
else: # Categories exists
cat = post['categories']
main = post['mainclass']
# If categories contains a single item, ex: categories: 'category1'
if type(cat) == str:
if cat.lower() != main:
cat = [cat, main]
else: # If categories is a list, ex: categories: [cat1, cat2]
cat = [s.lower() for s in cat]
if main in cat == False:
cat.append(main)
post['categories'] = cat
print("%s") % (post['categories'])
# Save the file.
newfile = io.open(fname, 'w', encoding='utf8')
frontmatter.dump(post, newfile)
newfile.close()
References
- Python-Frontmatter’s Githup repo.
Spot a typo?: Help me fix it by contacting me or commenting below!