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nicolashery/environment-variables-jekyll-templates.md

Last active January 22, 2023 15:56
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Make environment variables available in Jekyll Liquid templates
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environment-variables-jekyll-templates.md

Environment variables in Jekyll templates

This is one way to pass some data (API tokens, etc.) to your Jekyll templates without putting it in your _config.yml file (which is likely to be committed in your GitHub repository).

Copy the environment_variables.rb plugin to your _plugins folder, and add any environment variable you wish to have available on the site.config object.

In a Liquid template, that information will be available through the site object. For example, _layouts/default.html could contain:

<head>
   <!-- ... -->
  {% if site.env == 'production' %}
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="/build/style.min.css">
  {% else %}
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="/style.css">
  {% endif %}
</head>

Running jekyll build will use style.css by default. If you set export JEKYLL_ENV=production before running jekyll build, it will use style.min.css.

Raw
environment_variables.rb
# Plugin to add environment variables to the `site` object in Liquid templates
module Jekyll
class EnvironmentVariablesGenerator < Generator
def generate(site)
site.config['env'] = ENV['JEKYLL_ENV'] || 'development'
# Add other environment variables to `site.config` here...
end
end
end
@crazy-max
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crazy-max commented Jan 11, 2017

If you want to use your conf for some plugins it's better to raise the priority to highest.
And why not pretty print the result (in debug mode) :

module Jekyll

  class EnvironmentVariablesGenerator < Generator
    priority :highest

    def generate(site)
      site.config['env'] = ENV['JEKYLL_ENV'] || 'development'
      # Add other environment variables to `site.config` here...
      Jekyll.logger.debug site.config.to_yaml
    end
  end

end

@jveillet
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jveillet commented Jan 24, 2017 •
edited
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I was just searching to do that, very helpfull thanks! 👍
As someone else poited out, I required the dotenv gem and it works wonders.

@mosinski
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mosinski commented May 6, 2017

@k-funk nice tip thx 👍

@ScottA38
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ScottA38 commented Mar 25, 2021

This plugin is not needed since there exists JEKYLL_ENV
http://www.csinaction.com/2015/02/07/environments-in-jekyll-aka-jekyll_env/
@duleorlovic @errordeveloper

Your answers are very old so sorry for the question - how exactly does Jekyll.environment allow you to add custom ENV variables in _config?

@leogzyl
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leogzyl commented Jan 22, 2023

Really helpful, thanks!

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