` with your **real** url …
---
### Author:  [@maiki](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/maiki)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2020, 7:07pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/include-content-of-a-url/27357/3 "2020-08-04T19:07:28Z")
> [@Ruth\_Motza](#):
>
> I would like to load content of a markdown file that is available on the internet.
> [@Ruth\_Motza](#):
>
> But I am sure it is free to access on the internet.
To receive assistance you’ll need to share your shortcode. I don’t know of a method used to get the contents of a remote markdown file and render it via shortcode at build time. There’s normally a step involving getting the remote file and moving it to the local filesystem, where functions like `readFile` work.
See [Local file templates | Hugo](https://gohugo.io/templates/files/) for more details. The “remote” calls work for JSON and CSV, where Hugo will retrieve and cache the files for processing, described at [Data templates | Hugo](https://gohugo.io/templates/data-templates/#data-driven-content).
---
### Author:  [@Ruth\_Motza](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/Ruth_Motza)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2020, 5:51am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/include-content-of-a-url/27357/4 "2020-08-05T05:51:17Z")
sorry, I guess I wasn’t clear enough, I did not add the URL there as I thought this was overfilling the error message, it does show my actual URL at that placeholder
---
### Author:  [@Ruth\_Motza](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/Ruth_Motza)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2020, 5:52am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/include-content-of-a-url/27357/5 "2020-08-05T05:52:36Z")
Hi,
My shortcode is this:
```auto
{{$file := .Get 0}}
{{ $file | readFile | markdownify }}
```
I then use it like this:
```auto
{{% content "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/europace/kex-vorgang-export-api/master/README.md" %}}
```
but I get the error:
```auto
failed to render shortcode "content": failed to process shortcode: "...../layouts/shortcodes/content.html:2:11": execute of template failed: template: shortcodes/content.html:2:11: executing "shortcodes/content.html" at : error calling readFile: file "https:/raw.githubusercontent.com/europace/kex-vorgang-export-api/master/README.md" does not exist
```
I did assume that readFile does not take a URL with it, but I could not find another way to make this work and I assumed that somehow this must be possible… ☹
@maiki do you have a suggestion for the shortcode that would allow this? If I do `getJSON` I am not sure what will happen, as this file is not json but markdown… 🤔
---
### Author:  [@Ruth\_Motza](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/Ruth_Motza)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2020, 6:33am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/include-content-of-a-url/27357/6 "2020-08-05T06:33:03Z")
so when I do the following in my shortcode:
```auto
{{ getJSON "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/europace/kex-vorgang-export-api/master/README.md" | markdownify}}
```
I get the error:
```auto
Building sites … ERROR 2020/08/05 08:31:18 Failed to get JSON resource "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/europace/kex-vorgang-export-api/master/README.md": invalid character '#' looking for beginning of value
```
So this seems just to work for actual json ☹
---
### Author:  [@Ruth\_Motza](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/Ruth_Motza)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2020, 1:13pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/include-content-of-a-url/27357/7 "2020-08-05T13:13:42Z")
I have a quickfix for my problem now. It feels very hacky, but I did not find another way.
I now have a shortcode looking like this:
```auto
{{ $repo := .Get 0 }}
{{ $json := getJSON "https://api.github.com/repos/europace/" $repo "/readme" }}
{{ $json.content | base64Decode | markdownify }}
```
Then I call that in my md-file like this:
```auto
{{% europace-content "kex-vorgang-import-api" %}}
```
I am not happy with how it looks, but I am happy that I found something. I will keep this open for a few days as maybe somene has a better solution. Then I will close it 🙂
---
### Author:  [@moorereason](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/moorereason)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2020, 1:54pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/include-content-of-a-url/27357/8 "2020-08-05T13:54:25Z")
As you’re discovered, we don’t have a generic “get file via HTTP” template function. `readFile` is for the local OS. Our only “remote get” functions as of today are `getJSON` and `getCSV`.
---
### Author:  [@maiki](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/maiki)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2020, 7:04pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/include-content-of-a-url/27357/9 "2020-08-05T19:04:29Z")
> [@Ruth\_Motza](#):
>
> It feels very hacky, but I did not find another way.
Your feelings are valid, of course. I wanted to point out:
- markdown is for humans to write readable text that can be rendered in different ways and be easy to remember
- JSON is a data format made for the web
Getting the contents of a remote markdown file via JSON call, I wouldn’t call that hacky, I’d call it, “used as intended”. 🙂
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/system)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2020, 7:04pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/include-content-of-a-url/27357/10 "2020-08-07T19:04:33Z")
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