.htaccess, humans.txt with template logic

tips & tricks
1

How to have Hugo generate .htaccess, humans.txt, and other similar files while being able to use template logic and site variables.

Option 1: Outputs

We define custom output formats.

// config.toml
[outputs]
home = ["HTML", "htaccess", "humanstxt"]

[outputFormats]
[outputFormats.htaccess]
    baseName = ""
    isPlainText = true
    mediaType = "text/htaccess"

[outputFormats.humanstxt]
    baseName = "humans"
    isPlainText = true
    mediaType = "text/plain"

And a custom mediaType in the case of .htaccess:

// config.toml
[mediaTypes]
  [mediaTypes."text/htaccess"]
    suffixes = ["htaccess"]

Then we define layouts.

// layouts/index.humanstxt.txt
// layouts/index.htaccess
{{ site.BaseURL }}

These generate:

// public/humans.txt
// public/.htaccess
https://example.com/

Option 2: Assets*

**** This only works if you will be invoking the .Permalink for the generated file. ****

// assets/txt/alsohumans.txt
{{ site.BaseURL }}

<!-- somewhere in your baseof/head -->
{{ $alsohumans := resources.Get "txt/alsohumans.txt" | resources.ExecuteAsTemplate "alsohumans.txt" . }}
<link type="text/plain" rel="author" href="{{$alsohumans.Permalink}}" />

This generates:

// public/alsohumans.txt
https://example.com/

These work as of time of posting.

Hugo Static Site Generator v0.74.3-DA0437B4/extended linux/amd64 BuildDate: 2020-07-23T16:30:30Z

8 Likes
2

Great work. i was looking for a good description on how to create customer output formats.

I use this to create the htaccess content (I needed it when I migrated Wordpress to Hugo):

{{ range .Site.Pages }}
{{ if .Aliases }}
{{ $new := .RelPermalink }}
{{ range .Page.Aliases }}
<p>Redirect 301 {{ . }} {{ $new }}</p>
{{ end }}
{{ end }}
{{ end }}
2 Likes
4

Thank you for the tip! This is exactly I looked for. I’d like to share a possibility to generate humans.txt based on your approach.

config.toml:

# Possible 'Author' formats are:
#
# [author]
#   name = 'John Doe'
#   email = 'john@example.com'
#   github = '@john_doe'
#   location = 'Kyiv, Ukraine'
#
# OR
#
# [author]
#   [author.john_doe]
#     name = 'John Doe'
#     email = 'john@example.com'
#     github = '@john_doe'
#     location = 'Kyiv, Ukraine'
#   [author.jane_doe]
#     name = 'Jane Doe'
#     email = 'jane@example.com'
#     github = '@jane_doe'
#     location = 'Lviv, Ukraine'
[author]
  name = 'John Doe'
  email = 'john@example.com'
  github = '@john_doe'
  location = 'Kyiv, Ukraine'

layouts/index.humanstxt.txt:

{{ with site.Author }}
    {{- $author_type := (printf "%T" site.Author) }}
    {{- if (or (eq $author_type "map[string]string") (eq $author_type "map[string]interface {}")) }}
    /* TEAM */
        {{ range $i, $member := site.Author }}
            {{- if (eq (printf "%T" $member) "maps.Params") }}
                {{- partial "team-member.html" (dict "context" . "member" $member) -}}
            {{- else if (eq (printf "%T" $member) "string") }}
                {{- partial "team-member.html" (dict "context" . "member" site.Author) -}}
                {{- break -}}
            {{- end }}
        {{- end }}
    {{- end }}
{{- end }}

    /* SITE */

    Last update: {{ now.Format "2006/01/02" }}
    Language: {{ range $i, $l := site.Languages }}{{ if $i }}, {{ end }}{{ .LanguageName }}{{ end }}
    Doctype: HTML5
    Standards: HTML5, CSS3, Open Graph protocol, Schema.org
    Components: Hugo, jQuery, Ed Theme

layouts/partials/team-member.html:


    Author: {{ $.member.name | default "-" }}
    Contact: {{ $.member.email | default "-" }}
    GitHub: {{ $.member.github | default "-" }}
    From: {{ $.member.location | default "-" }}

Output:

    /* TEAM */

    Author: Jane Doe
    Contact: jane@example.com
    GitHub: @jane_doe
    From: Lviv, Ukraine

    Author: John Doe
    Contact: john@example.com
    GitHub: @john_doe
    From: Kyiv, Ukraine


    /* SITE */

    Last update: 2022-05-15
    Language: English
    Doctype: HTML5
    Standards: HTML5, CSS3, Open Graph protocol, Schema.org
    Components: Hugo, jQuery, Ed Theme

Note, due to {{- break -}} in layouts/index.humanstxt.txt you have to use Hugo >= 0.95.0. For more see: