@pauliescanlon/gatsby-mdx-routes

gatsby-mdx-routes

gatsby-mdx-routes is a plugin that exposes links to .mdx files sourced from src/pages.

This plugin aims to separate the data from the ui, which means the styling of your navigation is up to you.

👁️ Preview

• Live Demo

🚀 Getting started

Install

npm install @pauliescanlon/gatsby-mdx-routes

Setup

To source .mdx files from src/pages you'll need gatsby-source-filesystem and gatsby-plugin-mdx installed.

Your gatsby-config should look something like this...

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    {
      resolve: `gatsby-source-filesystem`,
      options: {
        name: `pages`,
        path: `${__dirname}/src/pages/`,
      },
    },
    {
      resolve: `gatsby-plugin-mdx`,
      options: {
        defaultLayouts: {
          default: `${__dirname}/src/layouts/layout.js`,
        },
      },
    },
  ],
}

If that's all setup you'll now need to add @pauliescanlon/gatsby-mdx-routes as a plugin of gatsby-plugin-mdx 😅

module.exports = {
  {
    resolve: `gatsby-plugin-mdx`,
    options: {
      defaultLayouts: {
        default: `${__dirname}/src/layouts/layout.js`,
      },
      plugins: [`@pauliescanlon/gatsby-mdx-routes`],
    },
  },
}

Using the defaultLayouts from gatsby-plugin-mdx allows you to create one file that will be repeated across pages.

This is where we'll add MdxRoutes.

MdxRoutes

MdxRoutes returns two arrays, routes which is a flat array and menus which is created recursively and contains a menu array.

You will probably use one or the other, not both.

routes

The routes array returns two object keys, one is the actual route to the file in question (slug), the other is the navigationLabel from frontmatter

Key	Description
slug	Route to .mdx file
navigationLabel	navigationLabel extracted from frontmatter

src/pages/a-page.mdx

frontmatter

---
navigationLabel: Page Title
---

src/layouts/layout.js

import React, { Fragment } from "react"
import { Link } from "gatsby"

import { MdxRoutes } from "@pauliescanlon/gatsby-mdx-routes"

export default ({ children }) => (
  <Fragment>
    <nav>
      <MdxRoutes>
        {(routes, _) => (
          <ul>
            {routes.map((route, index) => (
              <li key={index}>
                <Link to={route.slug}>{route.navigationLabel}</Link>
              </li>
            ))}
          </ul>
        )}
      </MdxRoutes>
    </nav>
    <main>{children}</main>
  </Fragment>
)

menus

The menus array also returns the two object keys mentioned above, it also returns the following

Key	Description
slug	Route to .mdx file
navigationLabel	navigationLabel extracted from frontmatter
id	key to use in recursive function
parent	string to determine parent
menu	array of routes grouped by parent
paths	internal array to use in recursive function

The menus array is constructed by looking at the file paths on disk and determining what depth a file lives. This is calculated by the amount of forward slashes in the slug

To create the menus array MdxRoutes will mirror the directory structure in your project

your project

|-- src
    |-- pages
        |-- other-pages
           |-- some-other-page.mdx
        |-- sub-pages
            |-- sub-page-items
               |-- sub-page-items-again
                  |-- sub-page-item-again-1.mdx
               |-- sub-page-item-1.mdx
            |-- sub-page-1.mdx
        |-- about.mdx
        |-- contact.mdx
        |-- index.mdx

To use the menus array you'll also need a recursive Tree function to create your navigation list.

Watch out for the conditional slug, we need this to determine if the object key is a parent or an actual route to a file.

src/layouts/layout.js

import React, { Fragment } from "react"
import { Link } from "gatsby"

import { MdxRoutes } from "@pauliescanlon/gatsby-mdx-routes"

const Tree = ({ menus }) => {
  const createTree = menus => {
    return (
      <ul>
        {menus.map(route => (
          <li key={route.navigationLabel}>
            {route.slug ? (
              <Link to={route.slug}>
                {route.navigationLabel}
                {route.menu && createTree(route.menu)}
              </Link>
            ) : (
              <span>
                {route.navigationLabel}
                {route.menu && createTree(route.menu)}
              </span>
            )}
          </li>
        ))}
      </ul>
    )
  }

  return createTree(menus, null)
}

export default ({ children }) => (
  <Fragment>
    <nav>
      <MdxRoutes>{(_, menus) => <Tree menus={menus} />}</MdxRoutes>
    </nav>
    <main>{children}</main>
  </Fragment>
)

props

Prop	Type	Required	Description
navigationOrder	Array[string]	no	A reference array to order by

navigationOrder

By passing in an array of strings MdxRoutes can use this to sort the returned routes or menus array, otherwise everything is just returned alphabetically in an ascending order based on the slug, with the index ("/") being first in the list.

<MdxRoutes navigationOrder={["Contact", "About", "Home", "Sub Page"]}>
  {(routes, menus) => (
    <ul>
      {routes.map((route, index) => (
        <li key={index}>
          <Link to={route.slug}>{route.navigationLabel}</Link>
        </li>
      ))}
    </ul>
  )}
</MdxRoutes>

If you're using gatsby-mdx-routes in your project i'd love to hear from you @pauliescanlon