Single-Page

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

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

[fields.title]
type = string

doc-pages.ini

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

[children]
model = doc-page
order_by = _id

doc-page.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/:

{% extends "layout.html" %}
{% block title %}{{ this.title }}{% endblock %}
{% block body %}
  {% set pages = site.query('/doc').include_undiscoverable(true).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.