Jekyll::Airtable

This gem enables you to easily integrate Airtable with Jekyll site and use it as a database. Everytime the Jekyll build is triggered, the gem would automatically send API request to the Airtable base and tables you specify from the environment variable and then store the records as collections, grouped according to the table names.

Installation

Add this line to your Jekyll site Gemfile:

gem 'jekyll-airtable'

And then execute:

$ bundle install

Usage

Because you will have to mention/use your API key, it is VERY RECOMMENDED to use dotenv so you do not have your API key lying around in plain sight.
```
gem 'dotenv'
```
run bundle install again
Add this to your repo .gitignore (create one if does not exist):
```
.env
```
Copy the .env.example in this repo to the root of your project, rename it to .env then fill it for your needs.
Set the SYNC_WITH_AIRTABLE key in the .env to 'true'

SYNC_WITH_AIRTABLE='true'

You need to add a custom plugin to get the dotenv to work, you do this by creating a folder _plugins (if does not exist already) inside your Jekyll repo
Inside the /_plugins, create a file called "environment_variables_generator.rb", with this as the content:

# Plugin to add environment variables to the `site` object in Liquid templates
require 'dotenv'

module Jekyll
  class EnvironmentVariablesGenerator < Generator
    priority :highest

    def generate(site)
      Dotenv.overload
      site.config['env'] = Dotenv.overload

      site.config['SYNC_WITH_AIRTABLE'] = ENV['SYNC_WITH_AIRTABLE']
      site.config['AIRTABLE_API_KEY']   = ENV['AIRTABLE_API_KEY']
      site.config['AIRTABLE_BASE_UID']  = ENV['AIRTABLE_BASE_UID']
      site.config['AIRTABLE_TABLE_NAMES'] = ENV['AIRTABLE_TABLE_NAMES'].split(',').map(&:strip)
    end
  end
end

Now the secret keys can be accessed by Jekyll without being visible to the public.

Now, you need to declare the plugins in the config.yml

plugins:
- jekyll-airtable
- environment_variables_generator

Finally, you can execute the plugin using sh bundle exec jekyll serve or sh bundle exec jekyll build

For production, you also have to set those keys and values.

You then need to set the collections on the _config.yml so that Jekyll recognizes them. The snippets below here are taken from https://github.com/galliani/airbase/blob/master/_config.yml. The collections on that repo are "use_cases", "whitepapers", and "tutorials", taken from the Airtable of "Use Cases", "Whitepapers", and "Tutorials" respectively.

collections_dir: collections
collections:
  use_cases:
    output: true
  whitepapers:
    output: true
  tutorials:
    output: true

defaults:
  - scope:
      type: "whitepapers"
    values:
      layout: "page" # any jekyll layout file you already have in the _layouts that you want to use for this collection type.

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/galliani/jekyll-airtable. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Code of Conduct

Everyone interacting in the Jekyll::Airtable project’s codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.