On my website, I want to show a list of collection items on pages corresponding to each collection. For example on the Games page, I want to show a list of all game related articles, on the Politics page, I want to show a list of all politics related articles, etc.
What I have right now is one Nunjucks template file for each such page, which I don't particularly like since they are the same except for the collection to show. Here is two of my templates, for my politics articles and for my games articles, where I extend a common boilerplate (base.njk) and in the main block, I first print some Markdown content and then comes the list of collection items:
{# politics.njk #}
{% extends "base.njk" %}
{% block main %}
<main>
{{ content | safe }}
<ul class="postlist no-bullets">
{% for item in collections.politics %}
{% include "partials/collection-list-item.njk" %}
{% endfor %}
</ul>
</main>
{% endblock %}
{# games.njk #}
{% extends "base.njk" %}
{% block main %}
<main>
{{ content | safe }}
<ul class="postlist no-bullets">
{% for item in collections.games %}
{% include "partials/collection-list-item.njk" %}
{% endfor %}
</ul>
</main>
{% endblock %}
As you can see, the only difference between these two files is collections.politics and collections.games. I would want to use one template, and in the frontmatter specify which collection I want. Since I'm already having one Markdown file per page the template used (for writing stuff before I begin listing articles), it would have been nice if it was possible. For example:
<!-- politics.md -->
---
layout: articles-list.njk
title: Politics
listCollection: collections.politics
---
# Politics
Below is a list of all politics articles I've written.
<!-- games.md -->
---
layout: articles-list.njk
title: Games
listCollection: collections.games
---
# Games
I think about games a lot. Below is a list of articles I've written on the topic.
{# articles-list.njk #}
{% extends "base.njk" %}
{% block main %}
<main>
{{ content | safe }}
<ul class="postlist no-bullets">
{% for item in listCollection %}
{% include "partials/collection-list-item.njk" %}
{% endfor %}
</ul>
</main>
{% endblock %}
Is it possible to do what I want to do in some other way than to have multiple template files?
You might be able to get to the collection using computed data, though I'm not sure if you have access to the collections there.
A simpler approach: Set your frontmatter field to the name of the colletion you want to display as a string, then use that to get the collection in the template:
<!-- politics.md -->
---
layout: articles-list.njk
title: Politics
listCollection: 'politics'
---
{# articles-list.njk #}
{% extends "base.njk" %}
{% block main %}
<main>
{{ content | safe }}
<ul class="postlist no-bullets">
{% for item in collections[listCollection] %}
{% include "partials/collection-list-item.njk" %}
{% endfor %}
</ul>
</main>
{% endblock %}