Link variable

[bradfrost]

I'm really diving into using the link variable (http://patternlab.io/docs/data-link-variable.html), and am absolutely loving it.

One thing I'd like to be able to do is link to other patterns with _data.json. I set a lot of my patterns up like so:

<a href="{{ url }}">

and would love to be able to point that {{ url }} to other patterns. Is this possible?

[dmolsen]

@bradfrost -

This is a silly example but hope it makes the point. You want a molecule that has in it:

<a href="{{ url }}">Foo</a>

And when templates-blog includes the molecule you want url replaced with a link to pattern A. When templates-homepage includes the molecule you want url replace with a link to pattern B. Correct? So one var that gets changed to different patterns?

[bradfrost]

Exaclty. So to further the example:

{{# foo }}
<a href="{{ url }}">Foo</a>
{{/ foo }}

In my templates-blog JSON file, I would do something like:

"foo" {
"url" : "link.pages-contact"
}

and in my templates-homepage JSON file

"foo" {
"url" : "link.pages-about"
}

[dmolsen]

@bradfrost -

I'm not hopeful I can implement this but I'll give it a shot.

[bradfrost]

Just bumping this up, as I'm repeatedly running into this issue.

Wondering if there's a way to give a prefix to the data with "link" or something to make this happen. Or something like {{ link.url }}, which could be a flag when Mustache is being parsed. Sorry, I'm shooting in the dark here as I don't how things are compiled :(

[dmolsen]

@bradfrost -

Really fast hack at this is in dev. In your JSON you can do:

"foo": {
    "url" : "link.pages-about"
}

Where link.pages-about will be changed to the real path to the pattern. Let me know if this works for you.

[bradfrost]

This works! Thanks for the amazing work. Wow this is so incredibly helpful.

[makeaweli]

Is this part of the current master?

[bradfrost]

@makeaweli It sure is. You can learn more about it here