Question

I spent today trying to do something simple with Jekyll for http://bitcoin.org/clients.html

We have a list of Bitcoin software, and every so often that page gets regenerated. It would be good if the order of clients would be randomised for equal exposure.

{% random page.clients %}
{% for client in page.clients %}
  ...

I’m sure it’s simple:

class Random < Liquid::Tag
  def initialize(tag_name, collection_name, tokens)
    @collection_name = collection_name.to_s
    super
  end

  def render(context)
    collection = context[@collection_name]
    collection = collection.sort_by{rand}
    context[@collection_name] = collection
    super
  end
end

Liquid::Template.register_tag('random', Random)

Why doesn’t it work? I see absolutely no change.

I assume I am not assigning to page.clients correctly, because if I try:

context[:foo] = collection

{% random page.clients %}
{% for client in page.clients %}
  ...

Then I get a blank page. But printing @collection_name shows “page.clients”…

Any ideas?

Thanks

Answer 1

class Random < Liquid::Tag
  Syntax = /(\w+[.]?\w+)\s+(\w+)/o

  def initialize(tag_name, markup, tokens)
    if markup =~ Syntax
      @collection_name = $1
      @randomized_name = $2
    else
      raise SyntaxError.new("Syntax Error in 'random' - Valid syntax: random [source] [var]")
    end
    super
  end

  def render(context)
    collection = context[@collection_name]
    collection = collection.sort_by{rand}
    context[@randomized_name] = collection
    return
  end
end

Liquid::Template.register_tag('random', Random)

And:

      {% random page.clients clients %}
      {% for client in clients %}
         ...