Back in May, in “Help your website get discovered,” I provided code you could use to add RSS and JSON feeds to an Eleventy site. Then, more recently, I added the “Reply via email” link to the bottom of each post. However, combining the two — i.e., making sure there was a “Reply via email” link in each entry in the respective feeds — hadn’t occurred to me until a few days ago, when a reader suggested it to me and provided a link to his own article, “Email Replies in Feeds,” explaining how he’d done it in the Metalsmith static site generator (SSG). Accordingly, I updated my feeds-related code to incorporate this capability.
Before I give you the updated code, here’s a TL;DR explanation of the changes I made. The Eleventy RSS plugin provides a variable called item.templateContent which grabs a post’s content. Since my per-post reply-via-email link falls outside the content’s boundaries, I created a separate variable, emailReplyHTML, to hold the HTML for that link, concatenated the two variables into finalHTMLContent, and then injected finalHTMLContent rather than item.templateContent into the appropriate content tag in each feed. Also: the original article mentioned how to do this in Hugo, too; so, thanks to some help I received on the Hugo community forum, I’ll do that, here, too.
Now, on to the code.
Eleventy RSS
index.xml
---json
{
"permalink": "/index.xml",
"eleventyExcludeFromCollections": true,
"metadata": {
"title": "BryceWray.com",
"subtitle": "brycewray.com — Observations, opinions, geekery.",
"description": "brycewray.com — Observations, opinions, geekery.",
"url": "https://www.brycewray.com/",
"feedUrl": "https://www.brycewray.com/index.xml",
"authors": {
"name": "Bryce Wray",
"url": "https://www.brycewray.com/about/"
}
}
}
---
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<title>{{ metadata.title }}</title>
<subtitle>{{ metadata.subtitle }}</subtitle>
<link href="{{ metadata.feedUrl }}" rel="self"/>
<link href="{{ metadata.url }}"/>
<updated>{{ collections.all | getNewestCollectionItemDate | dateToRfc3339 }}</updated>
<id>{{ metadata.url }}</id>
<author>
<name>{{ metadata.authors.name }}</name>
</author>
{%- for item in collections.all | reverse -%}
{%- if loop.index0 < 10 -%}
{%- set absolutePostUrl -%}{{ item.url | url | absoluteUrl(metadata.url) }}{%- endset -%}
{%- set emailReplyHTML -%}<p><a href="mailto:bw@brycewray.com?subject=Re: “{{ item.data.title }}”">Reply via email</a></p>{%- endset -%}
{%- set finalHTMLContent = [item.templateContent, emailReplyHTML] | join -%}
<entry>
<title>{{ item.data.title }}</title>
<link href="{{ absolutePostUrl }}"/>
<updated>{{ item.date | dateToRfc3339 }}</updated>
<id>{{ absolutePostUrl }}</id>
<summary>{%- if item.data.subtitle -%}{{ item.data.subtitle }}{%- else -%}""{%- endif -%}{%- if item.data.description %} • {{ item.data.description }}{%- else -%}"[No description]"{%- endif -%}</summary>
<content type="html">
{{ finalHTMLContent | htmlToAbsoluteUrls(absolutePostUrl) }}
</content>
</entry>
{%- endif -%}
{%- endfor %}
</feed>Eleventy JSON
index.json
---json
{
"permalink": "/index.json",
"eleventyExcludeFromCollections": true,
"metadata": {
"title": "BryceWray.com",
"description": "brycewray.com — Observations, opinions, geekery.",
"url": "https://www.brycewray.com/",
"feedUrl": "https://www.brycewray.com/index.json",
"authors": {
"name": "Bryce Wray",
"url": "https://www.brycewray.com/about/"
}
}
}
---
{
"version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1",
"title": "{{ metadata.title }}",
"home_page_url": "{{ metadata.url }}",
"feed_url": "{{ metadata.feedUrl }}",
"description": "{{ metadata.description }}",
"items": [
{%- for item in collections.all | reverse -%}
{%- if loop.index0 < 10 -%}
{%- set absolutePostUrl -%}{{ item.url | url | absoluteUrl(metadata.url) }}{%- endset -%}
{%- set emailReplyHTML -%}<p><a href="mailto:bw@brycewray.com?subject=Re: “{{ item.data.title }}”">Reply via email</a></p>{%- endset -%}
{%- set finalHTMLContent = [item.templateContent, emailReplyHTML] | join -%}
{
"id": "{{ absolutePostUrl }}",
"title": "{{ item.data.title }}",
"url": "{{ absolutePostUrl }}",
"date_published": "{{ item.date | dateFromRFC2822 }}",
"summary": "{% if item.data.subtitle -%}{{ item.data.subtitle }} • {% endif -%}{%- if item.data.description -%}{{ item.data.description }}{%- else -%}No description{%- endif %}",
"content_html": {{ finalHTMLContent | htmlToAbsoluteUrls(absolutePostUrl) | dump | safe }}
}{%- if not loop.last -%},{%- endif %}
{%- endif -%}
{%- endfor %}
]
}Hugo RSS
rss.xml
{{- $pctx := . -}}
{{- if .IsHome -}}{{ $pctx = .Site }}{{- end -}}
{{- $pages := slice -}}
{{- if or $.IsHome $.IsSection -}}
{{- $pages = $pctx.RegularPages -}}
{{- else -}}
{{- $pages = $pctx.Pages -}}
{{- end -}}
{{- $limit := .Site.Config.Services.RSS.Limit -}}
{{- if ge $limit 1 -}}
{{- $pages = $pages | first $limit -}}
{{- end -}}
{{- printf "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\" standalone=\"yes\"?>" | safeHTML }}
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<channel>
<title>{{ .Site.Params.Domain }}</title>
<link>{{ .Permalink }}</link>
<description>Recent content {{ if ne .Title .Site.Title }}{{ with .Title }}in {{.}} {{ end }}{{ end }}on {{ .Site.Title }}</description>
<generator>Hugo -- gohugo.io</generator>{{ with .Site.LanguageCode }}
<language>{{.}}</language>{{end}}{{ with .Site.Author.email }}
<managingEditor>{{.}}{{ with $.Site.Author.name }} ({{.}}){{end}}</managingEditor>{{end}}{{ with .Site.Author.email }}
<webMaster>{{.}}{{ with $.Site.Author.name }} ({{.}}){{end}}</webMaster>{{end}}{{ with .Site.Copyright }}
<copyright>{{.}}</copyright>{{end}}{{ if not .Date.IsZero }}
<lastBuildDate>{{ .Date.Format "Mon, 02 Jan 2006 15:04:05 -0700" | safeHTML }}</lastBuildDate>{{ end }}
{{- with .OutputFormats.Get "RSS" -}}
{{ printf "<atom:link href=%q rel=\"self\" type=%q />" .Permalink .MediaType | safeHTML }}
{{- end -}}
{{ range $pages }}
{{- $titleThis := .Title | .Page.RenderString -}}
{{- $emailReplyHTML := printf "%s%s%s" `<p><a href="mailto:bw@brycewray.com?subject=Re: “` $titleThis `”">Reply via email</a></p>` -}}
{{- $contentMD := .Content -}}
{{- $finalHTMLContent := printf "%s%s" $contentMD $emailReplyHTML -}}
<item>
<title>{{ $titleThis }}</title>
<subTitle>{{ .Params.Subtitle }}</subTitle>
<link>{{ .Permalink }}</link>
<pubDate>{{ .Date.Format "Mon, 02 Jan 2006 15:04:05 -0700" | safeHTML }}</pubDate>
{{ with .Site.Author.email }}<author>{{.}}{{ with $.Site.Author.name }} ({{.}}){{end}}</author>{{end}}
<guid>{{ .Permalink }}</guid>
<description>{{ $finalHTMLContent | html }}</description>
<
</item>
{{ end }}
</channel>
</rss>Hugo JSON
index.json
{{- $pctx := . -}}
{{- if .IsHome -}}{{ $pctx = .Site }}{{- end -}}
{{- $pages := $pctx.RegularPages -}}
{{- $limit := .Site.Config.Services.RSS.Limit -}}
{{- if ge $limit 1 -}}
{{- $pages = $pages | first $limit -}}
{{- end -}}
{{ $length := (len $pages) -}}
{
"version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1",
"title": "{{ .Site.Title }}",
"description": "{{ .Site.Params.Description }}",
"home_page_url": "{{ .Site.BaseURL }}",
{{ with .OutputFormats.Get "JSON" -}}
"feed_url": "{{ .Permalink }}",
{{ end -}}
{{ with .Site.LanguageCode -}}
"language": "{{ . }}",
{{ end -}}
{{ with $.Param "icon" -}}
"icon": "{{ . | absURL }}",
{{ end -}}
{{ with $.Param "favicon" -}}
"favicon": "{{ . | absURL }}",
{{ end -}}
{{ with .Site.Author.name -}}
"authors": [
{
"name": "{{ . }}"{{ with $.Site.Author.url }},
"url": "{{ . }}"{{ end }}{{ with $.Site.Author.avatar }},
"avatar": "{{ . | absURL }}"{{ end }}
}
],
{{ end -}}
"items": [
{{ range $index, $element := $pages -}}
{{- $emailReplyHTML := printf "%s%s%s" `<p><a href="mailto:bw@brycewray.com?subject=Re: “` .Title `”">Reply via email</a></p>` -}}
{{- $emailReplyHTML := $emailReplyHTML -}}
{{- $contentHTML := printf "%s%s" .Content $emailReplyHTML -}}
{
"title": {{ .Title | jsonify }},
"date_published": "{{ .Date.Format "2006-01-02T15:04:05Z07:00" }}",
"date_modified": "{{ .Lastmod.Format "2006-01-02T15:04:05Z07:00" }}",
"id": "{{ .Permalink }}",
"url": "{{ .Permalink }}",
{{ with .Params.author -}}
"authors": [
{
"name": "{{ . }}"
}
],
{{ end -}}
"content_html": {{- $contentHTML | jsonify -}}
}{{ if ne (add $index 1) $length }},{{ end }}
{{ end -}}
]
}Note: Of course, if you’re already a subscriber to either of my feeds (and, if so, thank you!), you won’t see the resulting “Reply via email” link in content that had been pulled into your chosen newsreader app before I implemented these code changes. The only way to see it in older content would be to flush the old posts and then reload them.
Latest commit (caac9a97) for page file:
2023-04-06 at 3:24:25 PM CDT.
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