# Franklin.jl Dynamically Loading and Suppressing Pages

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/franklin-jl-dynamically-loading-and-suppressing-pages/102530>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** franklin\
**Created:** [August 6, 2023, 7:55am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/franklin-jl-dynamically-loading-and-suppressing-pages/102530 "2023-08-06T07:55:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Ian\_L](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/ian_l/32/49509_2.png) [@Ian\_L](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Ian_L)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2023, 7:55am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/franklin-jl-dynamically-loading-and-suppressing-pages/102530/1 "2023-08-06T07:55:06Z")

</div>

There are two separate but slightly related problems. First, I have a directory called `posts` containing markdown files to be displayed. I would like to keep some of these markdown files in the folder, but suppress them during deployment. Now there is the `ignore` list in `config.md`, but I do not wish to add all of these files to the array as it gets cumbersome. Preferably, I could assign a local variable - say `publish=true` - to each page and let Franklin ignore these pages during the build process.

I attempted an alternative solution which is to move the `posts` folder to `_assets` but stumbled into my second issue. Since `posts` is now in `_assets`, there are no issues with hiding pages, but pages that _should_ be published end up getting suppressed as well. Given a markdown file in some location possibly outside of Franklin’s purview, how can I tell Franklin that I would like to create a web link at `/path` with the contents of the file displayed there?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tlienart](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tlienart/32/7640_2.png) [@tlienart](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/tlienart)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2023, 1:57pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/franklin-jl-dynamically-loading-and-suppressing-pages/102530/2 "2023-08-06T13:57:11Z")

</div>

am I interpreting your question correctly saying that you’d ideally like a draft mode where a `page.md` with

```julia
+++
draft = true
+++

# This is a post currently being written but not yet for deployment

Partial content...

```

would show locally when you run `serve` but not at deployment time? If so, I could see this being useful so kindly open an issue and I’ll try to get that in.

For your second question, whatever is in `_assets` is basically copied “as is” by Franklin without any attempt at conversion. I don’t think it’s a good path in your case (you could run a `hfun` function that would read your md files, check if they have the `draft` or `publish` page variable and generate the output but might as well have that in Franklin then)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Ian\_L](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/ian_l/32/49509_2.png) [@Ian\_L](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Ian_L)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2023, 5:18pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/franklin-jl-dynamically-loading-and-suppressing-pages/102530/3 "2023-08-06T17:18:53Z")

</div>

> you could run a `hfun` function that would read your md files, check if they have the `draft` or `publish` page variable and generate the output but might as well have that in Franklin then

So if I were to do this, I’m still not sure how to go about it. If `_posts` is a directory hidden from Franklin, I imagine I can do something like this:

```julia
function hfun_list_posts()
root = Franklin.PATHS[:folder]
pages = String[]
cd(root) do
    foreach(((r, dirs, fs),) -> if (length(dirs) == 0) append!(pages, joinpath.(r, fs)) end, walkdir("./_posts")
end

filter!(x->!pagevar(x, "draft", false), pages)

generate_pages(pages)

```

The part that is unclear still is generating the output page. For example, how would I specify associating `_posts/post1.md` to path `root/posts/post1`?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tlienart](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tlienart/32/7640_2.png) [@tlienart](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/tlienart)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2023, 7:18pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/franklin-jl-dynamically-loading-and-suppressing-pages/102530/4 "2023-08-06T19:18:28Z")

</div>

I’ll look into adding the draft stuff shortly.

To answer your question specifically, you could use `Franklin.form_output_path(base, relative, :md)` where `base` would just be `Franklin.PATHS[:folder]` and `relative` would be `joinpath("_posts", "one_of_your_post.md")`

I don’t recommend going this road though as it uses internal stuff and it’s likely you’ll get papercuts. You have two alternatives (1) you wait until I’ve gotten this draft thing in somewhat cleanly or (2) you use the `on_write` functionality; this is a `on_write = (a, b) -> fun(a, b)` argument which can be passed to `serve` and `optimize` which takes the fully generated HTML (argument `a`) and the dictionary of local variables (argument `b`) and lets you apply some logic. It’s called as the last step in converting and writing a single `.md` file.

This should work:

```julia
# definition of removedraft so you can later call
# optimize(...; on_write = removedraft)

function removedraft(_, locvars)
  # you actually don't care about the first argument (full html)
  # all you want is to remove the output page if 
  # (0) we're in the final loop (deployment / build stage)
  # (1) it exists
  # (2) it corresponds to a draft page

  Franklin.FD_ENV[:FINAL_PASS] || return
  relative_path = locvars["fd_rpath"].first # e.g. _posts/abc.md
  relative_url = locvars["fd_url"].first # e.g. /posts/abc/index.html
  
  output_path = joinpath("__site", split(relative_url, '/')...)
  isfile(output_path) || return

  haskey(locvars, "draft") || return
  locvars["draft"].first || return

  # now we have a file that exists, and that is a draft, nuke it
  println("removing $output_path")
  rm(output_path)
  return
end

```

Running `serve(...)` normally on your local machine will show everything, and on your deployment script you could put this `removedraft` function and pass it to the `optimize(...; on_write=removedraft)` call.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tlienart](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tlienart/32/7640_2.png) [@tlienart](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/tlienart)\
**Post date:** [August 11, 2023, 7:39am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/franklin-jl-dynamically-loading-and-suppressing-pages/102530/6 "2023-08-11T07:39:24Z")

</div>

in case others find this, a small patch (`0.10.89`) added the `draft` mode:

```julia
+++
draft = true
+++

# Some header

Your partial content that you want to see locally but not when deployed.

```