Understanding Frontmatter in Markdown

greenbutterfly

Frontmatter is a feature of Markdown that allows you to add information to your documents. It is typically used to add metadata, such as the title, author, and date of a document, but it can also be used to add a table of contents or other custom content. This discussion will explore what frontmatter is, how it is used, and how it can be used to improve the readability of your documents.

Mattias_alvaer

Frontmatter is a type of structured data that is defined at the beginning of Markdown content. It usually consists of metadata like titles, authors, dates, categories, and other custom variables. Frontmatter is enclosed between two lines of three dashes each, providing a way to separate the frontmatter and the content.

Frontmatter allows you to include additional information with your Markdown content that may not be part of the document. For example, you can include the date of publication, categories, author information, SEO metadata, excerpts, and more.

Using frontmatter can also help you manage and organize your content more easily. For example, frontmatter allows you to dynamically generate HTML from a single Markdown document, add custom values to a template, or loop through resources.

Here's a simple example of a frontmatter section in a Markdown file:

---
title: My Post 
author: John Doe
date: 2020-06-29
---

Frontmatter is a great way to add additional metadata to your Markdown content, making it easier to manage and organize. It also provides an easy way to output HTML from a single Markdown document or apply custom values to a template.