Include json file from one level up outside SOURCE dir

Help
1

Can I somehow make Jekyll include my file.json which sits in the parent directory of my Jekyll source directory?

+ docs
  + _site
  - _config.yml
- file.json

It should end up in the root of the created site:

+ docs
  + _site
    - file.json
  - _config.yml
- file.json

Thanks!

2

Since file.json is outside site.source, it won’t be seen by Jekyll under normal circumstances. The only way out would be write a plugin to include that file at runtime. Paste the following into a file at path docs/_plugins/external_json.rb:

module ExternalJSON
  class Generator < Jekyll::Generator
    def generate(site)
      site.static_files << Jekyll::StaticFile.new(site, site.source, "../", "file.json")
    end
  end
end

The next time you build your site, the _site/file.json will be generated.

Disclaimer: The above code is untested and may or may not work locally but will definitely not work on GitHub Pages or if you build with --safe switch.

3

Thanks for your quick answer. Maybe I should have included that I thought using the INCLUDE config setting the file could be included (include: ['../file.json'])? I ran jekyll with verbose output but it did not report the file as missing but also did not include it when outputting _site.

Cause I am using gh-pages for this site, I’d really not depend on plugins (that are not supported by github).

Is there no other way?

4

GitHub Pages is very restrictive for security reasons. That’s the reason they do not allow third-party plugins. For the same reason, there is absolutely no straight-forward way to achieve what you’re looking for when serving via GitHub Pages.

The only way is build your site locally and upload the contents of _site to GitHub (usually to a gh-pages branch so that the raw source-code can continue residing on the master branch.)