README

Content Markdown
Installation
Setup
Content Properties
Usage
Testing
Credits
License

This Laravel package with allow you to add a lightweight CMS to your Laravel application. This package will allow you to create markdown files in your Laravel application and then display the content on the front end of your website.

It works by writing in markdown files and then index the slug into the database. This will allow you to query on this slug to get the content of the markdown file.

Installation

Install the package via composer:

composer require paulund/content-markdown

Publish the configuration file:

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Paulund\ContentMarkdown\ContentMarkdownServiceProvider"
php artisan migrate

Setup

Add Filesystem Disk

Add the following to your config/filesystems.php file:

'disks' => [
    'content' => [
        'driver' => 'local',
        'root' => storage_path('content'),
        'visibility' => 'private',
        'serve' => false,
        'throw' => false,
    ],
],

This means you need to create a folder in the storage directory called content where you can store your markdown files.

├── storage/
│   └── content/

You can also add sub categories to the content folder to organise your markdown files.

├── storage/
│   └── content/
│       └── blog/
│       └── portfolio/

Setup Database Configuration

Content markdown consists of 3 database tables, content, tags and content_tags. You can create these tables by running the migration:

php artisan migrate

In the config file you can customise the database table names.

'database' => [
    'connection' => env('CONTENT_DATABASE_CONNECTION', 'sqlite'),
    'content_table_name' => env('CONTENT_DATABASE_TABLE', 'contents'),
    'tags_table_name' => env('TAG_DATABASE_TABLE', 'tags'),
    'content_tags_table_name' => env('CONTENT_TAGS_DATABASE_TABLE', 'content_tag'),
],

Draft Posts

There are a few ways that you can define a post as a draft.

In the frontmatter you can use published: false
Prefixing the file with . will make the file a draft

You can customise the prefix in the config file.

'drafts' => [
    'prefix' => '.',
],

Commonmark Configuration

This package uses commonmark to parse the markdown files. You can customise the configuration of commonmark in the config file.

'commonmark' => [
    'config' => [
        'heading_permalink' => [
            'html_class' => 'heading-permalink',
            'id_prefix' => 'content',
            'apply_id_to_heading' => true,
            'heading_class' => '',
            'fragment_prefix' => 'content',
            'insert' => 'after',
            'min_heading_level' => 1,
            'max_heading_level' => 6,
            'title' => 'Permalink',
            'symbol' => '#',
            'aria_hidden' => true,
        ],
    ],
],

Content Properties

title - The title of the content
slug - The slug of the content (optional)
tags - The tags of the content in array format, can also be string format
published - A boolean to define if the content is published
createdAt - The date the content was created
description - Meta description of the post

---
title: Content Title
slug: content-slug
tags:
    - blog
    - writing
published: true
createdAt: 2022-09-03 15:00:00
description: This is the meta description of the post
---

---
title: Content Title
slug: content-slug
tags: blog
published: true
createdAt: 2022-09-03 15:00:00
description: This is the meta description of the post
---

Usage

Index Command

The index command will take the markdown files in the filesystem disk and index the file in the database.

Whenever a new markdown files is created you need to run this command to index the file.

php artisan content:index

This will also run nightly to ensure the index stays up to date.

Get All Content

In order to display all of the content you can use the Content model to fetch the content.

Content::get();

Get All Content In Folder

You can organise your markdown files into different folders in the filesystem disk. You can query the content by folder.

Content::folder('blog')->get();

Get The Latest 10 Content

You can limit the number of content that is returned by using the limit method.

Content::latest()->limit(10)->get();

Get Content By Slug

You can query the content by the slug of the markdown file.

Content::slug('content-slug')->first();

Get Content By Tag

You can query the content by the tag of the markdown file.

Content::hasTag('blog')->get();

Display Content

Once you have found your content model in the database you can fetch the model and use the following properties.

$content = Content::slug('content-slug')->first();

echo $content->title;
echo $content->description;
echo $content->content;

Content Cache

Whenever you make a request the application will need to lookup the database but the slug of the file, then lookup the markdown file, then parse the markdown to display it. This can add some latency to the request. To speed up the request you can cache the content using the CacheResponse middleware.

Route::get('/content/{slug}', function ($slug) {
    $content = Content::slug($slug)->first();

    return response()->json($content);
})->middleware(\Paulund\ContentMarkdown\Http\Middleware\CacheResponse::class);

This will cache the response for 1 hour using the file store.

If you want to customise the cache settings you can change the store and the ttl.

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Cache Configuration
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Configure the Cache for your content. This is enabled by middleware
|
*/
'cache' => [
    /**
     * Enable or disable the cache
     */
    'enabled' => env('CONTENT_CACHE_ENABLED', true),
        
    /**
     * Cache store to use
     */
    'store' => env('CONTENT_CACHE_STORE', 'file'),

    /**
     * Seconds to cache the content for 3600 = 1 hour
     */
    'ttl' => env('CONTENT_CACHE_TTL', 3600),
]

By default content cache is enabled, but there is a config option to disable it, in your .env file you can add:

CONTENT_CACHE_ENABLED=false

On Deployment

After deployment of your application you can run the index command to index all the markdown files, you will also want to run a few other commands to optimise the application.

php artisan optimize
php artisan cache:clear file
php artisan content:index

Testing

vendor/bin/testbench workbench:install
composer test

Credits

paulund

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.

paulund / content-markdown

Maintainers

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