title: Single-Page
---
summary: Some inspiration for structuring single page apps.
---
body:

Lektor builds a page out of every source file.  However that does not mean
that you cannot have multiple pages combined into a single one.  You have
probably already seen that when doing something with the children of a page
in templates.  But you can do this in much more elaborate ways.

You could for instance generate a huge page out of individual pages to
achieve a page where you can scroll to all parts.

In this example we will implement a project documentation where all
documentation pages are rendered into a long page.

## The Models

First we need to define the models.  We will need three here:

* `doc-pages.ini`: this is a dummy model that we will use to hide away the
  parts of our big page.
* `doc-page.ini`: this is the model for our documentation pages.
* `index.ini`: this is the model we just use to combine everything together.

We will just sort all the documentation pages by the page ID so it's possible
to just order the pages by prefixing the page with a number
(`0001-installation`, `0002-quickstart` etc.)

### `index.ini`

```ini
[model]
name = Documentation
label = {{ this.title }}
hidden = yes
protected = yes

[fields.title]
type = string
```

### `doc-pages.ini`

```ini
[model]
name = Documentation Pages
label = Documentation Pages
hidden = yes
protected = yes

[children]
model = doc-page
order_by = _id
```

### `doc-page.ini`

```ini
[model]
name = Documentation Page
label = {{ this.title }}
hidden = yes

[fields.title]
type = string

[fields.body]
type = markdown
```

## Initializing the Contents

Now that we have the models we need to set up the initial pages.  All our
models are hidden which means that we cannot use the admin panel to setup
the initial pages.  So we need to set up the structure outselves.  The
following pages and contents we will need:

### `contents.lr`

```
_model: index
----
title: My Documentation
```

### `doc/contents.lr`

```
_model: doc-pages
----
_hidden: yes
```

This will set up our index model and our doc-pages model for the `doc/`
folder.  The latter is also set to `_hidden` which will make Lektor prevent
the generation of those files: they are invisible.  So we need to find other
ways to render them.

## Templates

For now we only need a single template: `index.html`, the one that will be
used by the only page that actually renders.  Within that template we now
need to query for all the other pages we have below `doc/`:

```html+jinja
{% extends "layout.html" %}
{% block title %}{{ this.title }}{% endblock %}
{% block body %}
  {% set pages = site.query('/doc').all() %}
  <header>
    <h1>{{ this.title }}</h1>
    <nav>
      <ul>
        {% for page in pages %}
        <li><a href="#{{ page._id }}">{{ page.title }}</a></li>
        {% endfor %}
      </ul>
    </nav>
  </header>
  {% for page in pages %}
    <div class="section" id="{{ page._id }}">
      <h1>{{ page.title }}</h1>
      {{ page.body }}
    </div>
  {% endfor %}
{% endblock %}
```

## Other Things To Do

Now every time you add or change a page below `doc/` it will start rebuilding
the overview page.  Obviously you can further complicate the setup by doing
something with attachments, supporting different models etc.  The
possibilities are endless.