Page scan

Scan a directory and return page metadata as a TT array variable.

Page scan

The scan: prefix in tt_page_var scans a directory for .md files and returns an array of page objects. Use it to build indexes, listings, and navigation from page metadata.

Syntax

---
tt_page_var:
  pages: scan:/blog/*.md sort=date desc
---

Pattern rules

• Must start with / (docroot-relative)
• Must end with .md
• Standard shell glob patterns work (*.md, post-*.md)
• Use ** for recursive scanning across all subdirectories: scan:/**/*.md scans the entire docroot
• Maximum 200 files returned per scan
• Files outside the docroot are excluded (realpath check)

Page object fields

Each scanned page returns these fields:

• url - docroot-relative URL (.md stripped, /index normalised to /)
• title - from front matter title: or empty string
• subtitle - from front matter subtitle: or empty string
• date - from front matter date: or file mtime (YYYY-MM-DD format)
• tags - array of tags from front matter (YAML list, comma-separated, or single value)
• excerpt - first 500 characters of the raw page body (after front matter), used for search snippets
• searchable - 1 or 0, from front matter search: or the site-wide search_default setting
• path - full filesystem path to the .md file

Sort modifier

Append sort=FIELD DIRECTION to the pattern:

scan:/blog/*.md sort=date desc
scan:/docs/*.md sort=title asc
scan:/pages/*.md sort=filename asc

Supported fields: date, title, filename. Default: filename asc. Direction is optional and defaults to asc.

Example

---
title: Blog
tt_page_var:
  posts: scan:/blog/*.md sort=date desc
---
[% FOREACH post IN posts %]
### [% post.title %]

*[% post.date %]* - [% post.subtitle %]

Read more
[% END %]

Notes

• Scans can also be defined in lazysite.conf for site-wide variables
• Tags are parsed from YAML list format, comma-separated strings, or single values into an array: [% page.tags.join(', ') %]
• The scan is performed at render time - results reflect the current state of the filesystem
• Filtered scan - filter results by field value
• Search - build a search index from scan results
• TT variables - all variable sources and types