Data Collections

Data collections are groups of data on a website.

You can use collections to create lists of content items (i.e. all of the bookmarks on your website).

You can create a data collection by:

Loading data from a JSON file
Loading data from a CSV file
Specifying a collections value on any page on your website

Create a Collection

JSON

To create a collection from a JSON file, add a new file to your site's pages/_data directory. This file should have a .json extension.

Within the file, create a list that contains JSON objects, like this:

[
    {
        "slug": "rosslyn-coffee",
        "layout": "coffee",
        "title": "Rosslyn Coffee in London is terrific."
    }
]

This file is called pages/_data/coffee.json.

Every entry must have a layout key. This corresponds with the name of the template that will be used to render the page. For example, the coffee layout will be rendered using the pages/_layouts/coffee.html template.

Every entry must also have a slug key. This corresponds with the name of the page that will be generated. In the case above, one file will be created in the _site output directory: _site/coffee/rosslyn-coffee/index.html.

CSV

To create a collection from a CSV file, add a new file to your site's pages/_data directory. This file should have a .csv extension.

Here is an example CSV file:

slug,layout,title
rosslyn-coffee,coffee,Rosslyn Coffee in London is terrific.

Your CSV file must have a header row that contains the keys for each entry.

This file is called pages/_data/coffee.csv.

Specify a Collections Attribute

If you want to group multiple existing files together, you can specify a collections attribute on any page on your website.

To do so, use the following syntax:

---
title: My Page
collections: coffee
---

You can then access the collection like so:

{% raw %}{% for item in coffee %}{% endraw %}
    {{ item.title }}
{% raw %}{% endfor %}{% endraw %}