What am I doing wrong? Lookup order issue, with complete example

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1

I’ve read the documentation, I’ve searched the topics, but it’s still not clear why is the lookup order is wrong.

Here’s this example: https://github.com/dotleon/leafbundlelayoutissue

According to the documentation, this is the lookup order for the “/leafbundle/” in the example:

Single page in “posts” section
layouts/posts/single.html.html
layouts/posts/single.html
layouts/_default/single.html.html
layouts/_default/single.html

This means that “/content/leafbundle/index.md” should render from “/layouts/leafbundle/single.html”. But it renders from “/_default/single.html” instead.

For whatever reason, this works right with a branch bundle, see /branchbundle/ in the example.

I feel like the documentation is in the wrong here, as /_default/ gets priority over /leafbundle/, but only if I use “index.md” (leaf bundle) instead of “_index.md” (branch bundle).

This got closed as an issue, so I suppose it’s my understanding of the lookup order that is wrong, but I couldn’t figure this out the whole day.

Could somebody explain why /leafbundle/ is not working in my example as one would expext?

2

Others please correct me if I’m wrong, but this is what I think is happening.

So this file:

content/leafbundle/index.md

Is equivalent (layout-wise) to this file:

content/leafbundle.md

In both cases, the layouts/_default/single.html template will be used.

Now, if you delete that content file, then create:

content/leafbundle/some-post.md

You will get the result you’re expecting, aka the layouts/leafbundle/single.html template will be used.

This is because content/leafbundle/some-post.md is actually a leaf bundle, whereas your previous content file is not. Hope this helps.

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3

https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/my-experiences-with-hugos-template-lookup-order/9959/3

Hope this helps

4

It doesn’t really help, as you create an _index.md too, which is a branch bundle. Branch bundle templating lookup works as expected, as documented.

Leaf bundles don’t.

5

This is because content/leafbundle/some-post.md is actually a leaf bundle, whereas your previous content file is not. Hope this helps.

From the documentation:

Leaf Bundle
Usage: Collection of content and attachments for single pages
Index file name: index.md

also

A Leaf Bundle is a directory at any hierarchy within the content/ directory, that contains an index.md file.

I’m still not convinced. This still very much sounds like a bug. Either in the documentation, or the way it actually works.

6

I can see the potential confusion.

cc @kaushalmodi as he will likely have a better explanation.

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7

No, think of /content/leafbundle/index.md as /content/leafbundle.md but as a Leaf Bundle. /content/leafbundle/index.md is not technically inside a “leafbundle” section.

… /layouts/leafbundle/single.html applies to pages in leafbundle “section”.

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8

If you look at this table:

Look at the row with “layout” in it. There is no “layout in folder lookup” in any of those variations.

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9

Single page in “posts” section with layout set

  • layouts/posts/demolayout.html.html
  • layouts/posts/single.html.html
  • layouts/posts/demolayout.html
  • layouts/posts/single.html

/content/leafbundle/index.md is not technically inside a “leafbundle” section.

This is the part I couldn’t comprehend up until this point. I think I understand now.

I really appreciate all of your input, things can get a little confusing until you have a solid grasp of what’s what.

I’ve managed to get over this issue by putting the demolayout.html into the _default folder, but it really bugged me that I didn’t understand why it’s not working, but now I do.

I’ve always hated web programming, but with hugo I’m actually enjoying it.

Thank you for helping!

PS: awesome community

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10

That said, you may want to look into setting Type in front matter (aka posts in the example).

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11

In addition you might want to look at this great explanation from @regis:

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12

I found exactly the same issue. Thanks @dotleon and everyone for working through this!

My scenario was essentially trying to create a new layout by converting content/post-xyz.md to content/post-xyz/index.md, which lead me to think that we can just use layouts/post-xyz/single.md because this documentation page about Page Bundles shows that a leaf bundle is just a page of type single.

So long story short - the simple option is just to use:

  1. an explicit front matter entry layout = post-xyz in index.md above
  2. add layouts/_default/post-xyz.html
1 Like