Template Toolkit variables

Template Toolkit variables

Page content and view templates are processed by Template Toolkit (TT). Variables come from three sources: site-wide configuration, per-page definitions, and automatic page metadata.

Variable sources

Site variables (from lazysite.conf):

site_name: My Site
site_url: ${REQUEST_SCHEME}://${SERVER_NAME}
footer_text: Copyright 2024

Per-page variables (from front matter tt_page_var:):

---
tt_page_var:
  features: scan:/docs/features/*.md sort=title asc
  version: url:https://example.com/version.txt
  label: Custom Label
---

Automatic variables (always available):

• page_title - from front matter title:
• page_subtitle - from front matter subtitle:
• page_modified - file mtime formatted as "1 January 2024"
• page_modified_iso - file mtime as "2024-01-01"
• content - rendered page body (available in the view template)
• nav - navigation array from nav.conf
• query - query parameter hash (when query_params: is declared)

Value types

Literal value:

my_var: some text

Environment variable interpolation (allowlisted variables only):

site_url: ${REQUEST_SCHEME}://${SERVER_NAME}

Allowlisted variables: SERVER_NAME, SERVER_PORT, REQUEST_SCHEME, HTTPS, REQUEST_URI, REDIRECT_URL, DOCUMENT_ROOT, SERVER_ADMIN.

Remote URL fetch:

latest: url:https://example.com/data.txt

Directory scan:

posts: scan:/blog/*.md sort=date desc

Example

---
title: Dashboard
tt_page_var:
  posts: scan:/blog/*.md sort=date desc
  motto: Live free or die
---
## [% motto %]

[% FOREACH post IN posts %]
- [[% post.title %]]([% post.url %]) ([% post.date %])
[% END %]

Notes

• Code blocks (<pre><code> and inline <code>) are protected from TT processing - TT directives inside code blocks are preserved as literal text
• TT directives in front matter scalar values (title:, subtitle:, etc.) are stripped for security - [% and %] sequences are removed
• The content TT pass uses ABSOLUTE => 0 to prevent file access from within page content
• Site variables and page variables with the same name: page variables take precedence
• lazysite.conf - site variable configuration