# Custom content type, multiple entries grouped by day, no individual permalink?

**URL:** <https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/custom-content-type-multiple-entries-grouped-by-day-no-individual-permalink/56939>\
**Category:** support\
**Created:** [March 31, 2026, 1:11am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/custom-content-type-multiple-entries-grouped-by-day-no-individual-permalink/56939 "2026-03-31T01:11:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 11\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![morbus](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/morbus/32/25811_2.png) [@morbus](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/morbus)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2026, 1:11am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/custom-content-type-multiple-entries-grouped-by-day-no-individual-permalink/56939/1 "2026-03-31T01:11:19Z")

</div>

G’day! I’ve got a custom content type called `activities` (singular: `activity`). Content files are stored in `content/activities/`. I’d like to display these activities by _day_, without any individual permalinks. If there are five activities that have the same day (set in front matter `date`), I’d like to automatically generate a single list page (at, say, `/activities/YYYY/MM/DD/index.html`) that displays all five activities for that day. I would NOT like to generate ANY individual pages: I do not want five pages, one page per activity, to be generated. I anticipate tens of thousands of individual `content/activities` files, but I only ever want to (automatically) generate a number of HTML lists that equate to the number of days those activities spanned across.

Is this something Hugo can do?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![morbus](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/morbus/32/25811_2.png) [@morbus](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/morbus)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2026, 1:35am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/custom-content-type-multiple-entries-grouped-by-day-no-individual-permalink/56939/2 "2026-03-31T01:35:11Z")

</div>

One option appears to be a leaf bundle, as seen here:

> [@New to Hugo | is what I'm trying to do possible?](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/new-to-hugo-is-what-im-trying-to-do-possible/23135/2):
>
> Hi, there’s pretty much first-class support for this! You can use [leaf bundles](https://gohugo.io/content-management/page-bundles/#leaf-bundles). Have a content/biographies/index.md with general content for the “list” page, and a markdown file for each person like content/biographies/jane-doe.md. No pages are generated for markdown files except index.md In the corresponding biography single page template you can do this: \<h1\>{{ .Title }}\</h1\> \<p\>{{ .Content }}\</p\> {{ range .Resources.ByType "page" }} \<h1\>{{ .Title }}\</h1\> \<p\>{{ .Content }}\</p\> …

but this would have me manually creating a duplicate \_index.md for each and every day, and that’s not something I’d relish (as activities go back nearly 30 years). There’s a mention of [Data sources](https://gohugo.io/content-management/data-sources/) there too, and I think I might be willing to do some sort of activity-by-day “data” $Date shortcode, but I don’t know how I’d rig it up to generate per-day lists at `/activities/YYYY/MM/DD/`.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jmooring](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/jmooring/32/4214_2.png) [@jmooring](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/jmooring)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2026, 1:38am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/custom-content-type-multiple-entries-grouped-by-day-no-individual-permalink/56939/3 "2026-03-31T01:38:41Z")

</div>

Do you need to create a content file for each activity, or can you define the activities in a data file? If you can do the latter, use a content adapter to create your list pages.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![morbus](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/morbus/32/25811_2.png) [@morbus](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/morbus)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2026, 1:41am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/custom-content-type-multiple-entries-grouped-by-day-no-individual-permalink/56939/4 "2026-03-31T01:41:04Z")

</div>

MMm. Ok. I’ve never worked with [content adapters](https://gohugo.io/content-management/content-adapters/) before.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jmooring](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/jmooring/32/4214_2.png) [@jmooring](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/jmooring)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2026, 1:56am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/custom-content-type-multiple-entries-grouped-by-day-no-individual-permalink/56939/5 "2026-03-31T01:56:52Z")

</div>

I would place the data in `assets/data/activities` with a data structure such as…

YAML

```yml
- 2026:
  - 03:
    - 30:
      - name: Lunch on the Wharf
        location: San Francisco, CA
        type: Meal
        time_begin: 2026-03-30T14:00:00-07:00
        time_end: 2026-03-30T16:00:00-07:00
        description: |
          We'll be having lunch on the wharf.

          It will be awesome.
      - name: Golden Gate Park Tour
        location: San Francisco, CA
        type: Tour
        time_begin: 2026-03-30T14:00:00-07:00
        time_end: 2026-03-30T16:00:00-07:00
        description: |
          This is a tour of Golden Gate Park.

```

It’s a lot easier to group the data up front.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![morbus](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/morbus/32/25811_2.png) [@morbus](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/morbus)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2026, 1:58am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/custom-content-type-multiple-entries-grouped-by-day-no-individual-permalink/56939/6 "2026-03-31T01:58:58Z")

</div>

Unfortunately, the data is coming from dozens of sources, so I’d prefer to have `data/activities/SOURCE.json`… otherwise, each data retrieval script would have to parse and generate a ginormous file, full of stuff that “is not theirs”. Not entirely out of the realm of reason, but not exactly what I was hoping for. I’m still trying trying to figure out the content adapter part of it 😃

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jmooring](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/jmooring/32/4214_2.png) [@jmooring](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/jmooring)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2026, 2:02am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/custom-content-type-multiple-entries-grouped-by-day-no-individual-permalink/56939/7 "2026-03-31T02:02:07Z")

</div>

If it were my project, I’d create an external pre-processor to validate, standardize, and combine the various source files into one file, JSON if you’d prefer.

`assets/data/activities.json`

```json
[
  {
    "2026": [
      {
        "3": [
          {
            "30": [
              {
                "name": "Lunch on the Wharf",
                "location": "San Francisco, CA",
                "type": "Meal",
                "time_begin": "2026-03-30T21:00:00.000Z",
                "time_end": "2026-03-30T23:00:00.000Z",
                "description": "We'll be having lunch on the wharf.\n\nIt will be awesome.\n"
              },
              {
                "name": "Golden Gate Park Tour",
                "location": "San Francisco, CA",
                "type": "Tour",
                "time_begin": "2026-03-30T21:00:00.000Z",
                "time_end": "2026-03-30T23:00:00.000Z",
                "description": "This is a tour of Golden Gate Park.\n"
              }
            ]
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
]
```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![morbus](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/morbus/32/25811_2.png) [@morbus](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/morbus)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2026, 2:03am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/custom-content-type-multiple-entries-grouped-by-day-no-individual-permalink/56939/8 "2026-03-31T02:03:29Z")

</div>

I’m pretty sure I can figure out the data aspects of it - could you help me with the content adapter? So far I’ve gotten as far as `/content/activities/_content.gotmpl` and

```auto
{{ with resources.Get 'letterboxd.json' }}

{{ end }}

```

😃

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jmooring](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/jmooring/32/4214_2.png) [@jmooring](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/jmooring)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2026, 2:05am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/custom-content-type-multiple-entries-grouped-by-day-no-individual-permalink/56939/9 "2026-03-31T02:05:07Z")

</div>

Create a map from the resource using the `transform.Unmarshal` function, then start looping through the data.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![morbus](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/morbus/32/25811_2.png) [@morbus](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/morbus)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2026, 2:54am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/custom-content-type-multiple-entries-grouped-by-day-no-individual-permalink/56939/10 "2026-03-31T02:54:13Z")

</div>

I don’t really know what I’m doing here. Given `data/activities.json`:

```auto
{
  "days": [
    {
      "title": "2026-03-31",
      "date": "2026-03-31T10:00:00",
      "summary": "Something something 2222\nSomething something 3333\n",
      "items": [
        {
          "id": 2222
        },
        {
          "id": 3333
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "2026-03-30",
      "date": "2026-03-30T10:00:00",
      "summary": "Something something 4444\nSomething something 5555\n",
      "items": [
        {
          "id": 4444
        },
        {
          "id": 5555
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

```

And `content/activities/_content.gotmpl` (cobbled together from the “Example” on [Content adapters](https://gohugo.io/content-management/content-adapters/) , along with `layout/activity/page.html`), I can run `hugo server --buildDrafts --disableFastRender` and it doesn’t complain about any errors… but it also doesn’t seem to generate any pages at the path I’ve specified:

```auto
{{ range hugo.Data.activities.days }}
  {{ $content := dict "mediaType" "text/markdown" "value" .summary }}
  {{ $dates := dict "date" (time.AsTime .date) }}
  {{ $t := dict "date" (time.AsTime .date) }}
  {{ $page := dict
    "content" $content
    "dates" $dates
    "kind" "page"
    "path" "activities/$t.Year/$t.Month/$t.Day/"
    "title" .title
  }}
  {{ $.AddPage $page }}
{{ end }}

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![morbus](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/morbus/32/25811_2.png) [@morbus](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/morbus)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2026, 3:12am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/custom-content-type-multiple-entries-grouped-by-day-no-individual-permalink/56939/11 "2026-03-31T03:12:56Z")

</div>

If this is the “best approach” for doing it in Hugo, and my scripts have to collectively generate a massive JSON (YAML, etc.) to power it… it’s really not that much extra work to, outside of Hugo, a) load that JSON myself and b) just generate daily `/content/activities/YYYYMMDD.md` files myself, without having to worry about Hugo content adapters. I’ll explore that approach instead.

Thank you for the help and consideration, @jmooring!