# How to list all files under /content/docs in the correct order

**URL:** <https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/how-to-list-all-files-under-content-docs-in-the-correct-order/43036>\
**Category:** support\
**Created:** [February 19, 2023, 3:16am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/how-to-list-all-files-under-content-docs-in-the-correct-order/43036 "2023-02-19T03:16:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 9\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Ilia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/eb9ed0/32.png) [@Ilia](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/Ilia)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2023, 3:16am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/how-to-list-all-files-under-content-docs-in-the-correct-order/43036/1 "2023-02-19T03:16:02Z")

</div>

Hello,

Could some one please help to understand how to sort files under `/content/docs` in the needed order.

I get the list of files like this:

```auto
{{ with .Site.GetPage "docs" }}
  {{ template "docs-files" (dict "Section" . "CurrentPage" $) }}
{{ end }}

```

But the order in which directories are displayed are off, meaning that the sub directory is actually placed above the parent, e.g.:

```auto
docs/A/a.md
docs/A/b.md
docs/B/C/a.md
docs/B/C/b.md
docs/B/C/c.md
docs/B/a.md
docs/B/b.md

```

**Needed order:**

```auto
docs/A/a.md
docs/A/b.md
docs/B/a.md
docs/B/b.md
docs/B/C/a.md
docs/B/C/b.md
docs/B/C/c.md

```

---

<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:** [February 19, 2023, 3:24am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/how-to-list-all-files-under-content-docs-in-the-correct-order/43036/2 "2023-02-19T03:24:09Z")

</div>

It would be helpful to see `docs-files`, whatever that is.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Ilia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/eb9ed0/32.png) [@Ilia](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/Ilia)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2023, 4:02am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/how-to-list-all-files-under-content-docs-in-the-correct-order/43036/3 "2023-02-19T04:02:45Z")

</div>

Hello, Joe!

I’m not sure what you mean exactly. I’m very new to Hugo and Go.

Although, I’m not bind to the current code (provided in the example), any would work. I just need to read the files under `doc/` in the expected order (provided on the example above).

The ultimate point is to create a menu out of that directory structure, where each directory becomes a section name. It doesn’t seem to be a problem. The only obstacle at the moment is the initial sorting. I managed to sort files by `File.Path` but that also reverses the file names order.

Thank you for your help!

---

<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:** [February 19, 2023, 6:38am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/how-to-list-all-files-under-content-docs-in-the-correct-order/43036/4 "2023-02-19T06:38:40Z")

</div>

```auto
{{ template "docs-files" ... }}

```

It’s calling a template you’ve defined as “docs-files”. Maybe should search your code for “docs-files”.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Ilia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/eb9ed0/32.png) [@Ilia](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/Ilia)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2023, 11:19am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/how-to-list-all-files-under-content-docs-in-the-correct-order/43036/5 "2023-02-19T11:19:59Z")

</div>

> [@jmooring](#):
>
> It’s calling a template you’ve defined as “docs-files”. Maybe should search your code for “docs-files”.

This is the full code that I came up with:

```auto
<!-- Get all pages under content/doc/ -->
{{ with .Site.GetPage "docs" }}
  {{ template "docs-files" (dict "Section" . "CurrentPage" $) }}
{{ end }}

<!-- Print docs structure -->
{{ define "docs-files" }}
{{ $categorized := slice }}
  <aside>
    {{ $pages := .Section.Pages }}
    {{ range (sort $pages "File.Path").Reverse }}
      {{ $indent := sub (.Page.RelPermalink | strings.Count "/") 3 }}
      <div class="docs-menu-indent-{{ $indent }}">
        {{ $current := eq $.CurrentPage .Page }}
        {{ $section := replaceRE ".*/(.*)/.*" "$1" .Page.File.Path }}
        {{ if not (in $categorized $section) }}
          {{ if ne (substr $section 0 (len "docs/")) "docs/" }}
            {{ $categorized = $categorized | append $section }}
            <tt>{{ $section }}</tt><br>
          {{ end }}
        {{ end }}
        <a href="{{ .RelPermalink }}"{{ if $current }} class="active"{{ end }}>
          {{ .LinkTitle }}
        </a>
      </div>
    {{ end }}
  </aside>
{{ end }}

```

This code produces:

```auto
B
  b.md
  a.md
  C
    c.md
    b.md
    a.md
b.md
a.md

```

My goal is to keep files sorted alphabetically in each section.

---

<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:** [February 21, 2023, 11:15pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/how-to-list-all-files-under-content-docs-in-the-correct-order/43036/6 "2023-02-21T23:15:57Z")

</div>

With this structure:

```plaintext
content/
├── docs/
│ ├── A/
│ │ ├── a.md
│ │ └── b.md
│ └── B/
│ ├── C/
│ │ ├── a.md
│ │ ├── b.md
│ │ └── c.md
│ ├── a.md
│ └── b.md
└── _index.md

```

I get this order when I run the code you posted above:

```plaintext
C
/docs/b/c/c/
/docs/b/c/b/
/docs/b/c/a/
B
/docs/b/b/
/docs/b/a/
A
/docs/a/b/
/docs/a/a/

```

If you want to reverse the order, change this:

```auto
{{ range (sort $pages "File.Path").Reverse }}

```

to this:

```auto
{{ range (sort $pages "File.Path" }}

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Ilia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/eb9ed0/32.png) [@Ilia](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/Ilia)\
**Post date:** [February 22, 2023, 7:15am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/how-to-list-all-files-under-content-docs-in-the-correct-order/43036/7 "2023-02-22T07:15:10Z")

</div>

Thanks, Joe. Removing reverse in that case also doesn’t help, because it lists directories in the order that isn’t working for categorizing, i.e.:

```auto
docs/A/a.md
docs/A/b.md
docs/B/C/a.md
docs/B/C/b.md
docs/B/C/c.md
docs/B/a.md
docs/B/b.md

```

… would be categorized to:

```auto
A
  a.md
  b.md
B
  C
    a.md
    b.md
    c.md
B
  a.md
  b.md

```

---

<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:** [February 22, 2023, 7:53am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/how-to-list-all-files-under-content-docs-in-the-correct-order/43036/8 "2023-02-22T07:53:28Z")

</div>

Let’s back up for a second.

There are two methods to partition content files in directories.

#### Method 1 - Each directory is a Hugo section

This is the idiomatic way to structure content with Hugo, making it very easy to “walk” the structure, and to access each section separately (e.g., give me a list of pages in directory a/b/c/). In addition to the content files, each directory must have an \_index.md file — that’s how Hugo knows it’s a section.

**This is the right way to structure your data if you want a section menu.**

> **Example**
>
> ```plaintext
> content/
> ├── section-a/
> │ ├── section-a-1/
> │ │ ├── _index.md
> │ │ ├── page-a-1-1.md
> │ │ └── page-a-1-2.md
> │ ├── section-a-2/
> │ │ ├── section-a-2-1/
> │ │ │ ├── _index.md
> │ │ │ ├── page-a-2-1-1.md
> │ │ │ └── page-a-2-1-2.md
> │ │ ├── section-a-2-2/
> │ │ │ ├── _index.md
> │ │ │ ├── page-a-2-2-1.md
> │ │ │ └── page-a-2-2-2.md
> │ │ ├── _index.md
> │ │ ├── page-a-2-1.md
> │ │ └── page-a-2-2.md
> │ ├── _index.md
> │ ├── page-a-1.md
> │ └── page-a-2.md
> ├── section-b/
> │ ├── section-b-1/
> │ │ ├── _index.md
> │ │ ├── page-b-1-1.md
> │ │ └── page-b-1-2.md
> │ ├── section-b-2/
> │ │ ├── _index.md
> │ │ ├── page-b-2-1.md
> │ │ └── page-b-2-2.md
> │ ├── _index.md
> │ ├── page-b-1.md
> │ └── page-b-2.md
> └── _index.md
> 
> ```

  

#### Method 2 - Just a bunch of nested directories

To “walk” the structure, we need to look at the file system. While you can then build links to the content pages, you cannot build links to the directories themselves. And there are other drawbacks.

> **Example**
>
> ```plaintext
> content/
> ├── section-a/
> │ ├── section-a-1/
> │ │ ├── page-a-1-1.md
> │ │ └── page-a-1-2.md
> │ ├── section-a-2/
> │ │ ├── section-a-2-1/
> │ │ │ ├── page-a-2-1-1.md
> │ │ │ └── page-a-2-1-2.md
> │ │ ├── section-a-2-2/
> │ │ │ ├── page-a-2-2-1.md
> │ │ │ └── page-a-2-2-2.md
> │ │ ├── page-a-2-1.md
> │ │ └── page-a-2-2.md
> │ ├── page-a-1.md
> │ └── page-a-2.md
> ├── section-b/
> │ ├── section-b-1/
> │ │ ├── page-b-1-1.md
> │ │ └── page-b-1-2.md
> │ ├── section-b-2/
> │ │ ├── page-b-2-1.md
> │ │ └── page-b-2-2.md
> │ ├── page-b-1.md
> │ └── page-b-2.md
> └── _index.md
> 
> ```

  

Your examples have all had the “method 2” structure. If you change to “method 1” it will make everything easier.

Please advise.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Ilia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/eb9ed0/32.png) [@Ilia](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/Ilia)\
**Post date:** [February 22, 2023, 10:20am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/how-to-list-all-files-under-content-docs-in-the-correct-order/43036/9 "2023-02-22T10:20:41Z")

</div>

Thanks, Joe. I eventually came up to the conclusion that using sorting `.ByWeight` is easier, i.e. like this:

```auto
{{ $pages := .Section.Pages }}
{{ range $pageIndex, $page := $pages.ByWeight }}
    ...
{{ end }}

```