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Static Files

In addition to renderable and convertible content, we also have static files.

A static file is a file that does not contain any YAML front matter. These include images, PDFs, and other un-rendered content.

They’re accessible in Liquid via site.static_files and contain the following metadata:

Variable	Description
file.path	The relative path to the file, e.g. /assets/img/image.jpg
file.modified_time	The `Time` the file was last modified, e.g. 2016-04-01 16:35:26 +0200
file.name	The string name of the file e.g. image.jpg for image.jpg
file.basename	The string basename of the file e.g. image for image.jpg
file.extname	The extension name for the file, e.g. .jpg for image.jpg

Note that in the above table, file can be anything. It’s simply an arbitrarily set variable used in your own logic (such as in a for loop). It isn’t a global site or page variable.

Add front matter to static files

Although you can’t directly add front matter values to static files, you can set front matter values through the defaults property in your configuration file. When Jekyll builds the site, it will use the front matter values you set.

Here’s an example:

In your _config.yml file, add the following values to the defaults property:

defaults:
  - scope:
      path: "assets/img"
    values:
      image: true

This assumes that your Jekyll site has a folder path of assets/img where you have images (static files) stored. When Jekyll builds the site, it will treat each image as if it had the front matter value of image: true.

Suppose you want to list all your image assets as contained in assets/img. You could use this for loop to look in the static_files object and get all static files that have this front matter property:

{% assign image_files = site.static_files | where: "image", true %}
{% for myimage in image_files %}
  {{ myimage.path }}
{% endfor %}

When you build your site, the output will list the path to each file that meets this front matter condition.

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