TL;DR 💨 Contentlayer reduces a lot of friction in publishing the content on my static website. 😍 MDX with remark and rehype plugins is awesomely convenient and powerful. 🍵 Next.js jells very well with Contentlayer and MDX I fully embraced (SSG) for my website to optimize the site speed and scaling in the future. Static Site Generation Recently I’ve been researching on reducing the effort to create a new article on my website. There were many touch points in my project setup in order to: Next.js Publish a new article Estimate reading time Update the list of articles Create a new RSS feed Update the sitemap What Was The Problem? I analyzed a little more and found out the friction was in my MDX usage. My file structure looked like this: my-blog
├── public
├── data
│   └── blogs.json
├── components
│   └── Blog.tsx
└── pages
    ├── blogs
    │   ├── blog-one.mdx
    │   ├── blog-two.mdx
    │   └── blog-three.mdx
    └── index.tsx It is the recommended by Next.js. I was using and to transform MDX into pages. standard setup @mdx-js/loader @next/mdx Take for example, the content looked like this: pages/blogs/blog-one.mdx pages/blogs/blog-one.mdx import Blog from '../../components/Blog'

export const meta = {
  title: 'Blog One🚀',
  publishedAt: 'February 4, 2022'
  description: "Learn how to build a Next.js blog with MDX and Contentlayer!",
  cover: '/optimized/articles/blog-one/hero.webp',
}

export default ({ children }) => (
  <Blog
    title={meta.title}
    description={meta.description}
    cover={meta.cover}
    publishedAt={meta.publishedAt}
  >
    {children}
  </Blog>
)

Hey There👋

Welcome to Blog one✨ Let's learn together! named-exported a meta data. It was picked up by the the default component that took care of the layout and rendered the meta data. blog-one.mdx The component looked like this: <Blog /> components/Blog.tsx import { BlogProps } from './types'

export default function Blog(props: BlogProps) {
  return (
    <article>
      <h1>{props.title}</h1>
      <h2>{props.description}</h2>
      <p>
        {props.publishedAt}
      </p>
      <img alt={props.title} src={props.cover} width="100%" loading="lazy" />
      {props.children}
    </article>
  )
} I was treating MDX files as pages. Because the data in each MDX file was trapped in the page, I duplicated all the meta data and aggregated them in . I used it to maintain the list of articles on my website, the RSS feed, and the for SEO. meta data/blogs.json sitemap It would be much better if I could treat the MDX files as data, and generate pages based on the data. This way, . Publishing a new article ideally could be much more frictionless. I could use the MDX files as data points and page content at the same time I came across and found out he was using a alpha library called to solve the problem. Lee Robinson’s website Contentlayer What is Contentlayer is an library in its early stage that turns content into data. It works roughly like this: Contentlayer It takes in headless CMS or local content in YAML, JSON, MDX, or Markdown as source. It transforms the content into TypeScript types and data files in JSON that includes the original content, meta data, and any derived data we specified. It aggregates all the data in JSON and exports them as . ESM For my use case, I can use the aggregated data generated by Contentlayer to replace my previous manual process: I use the generated data to build the new page for an article. I use the generated data to render . the list of articles I use the generated data to create a new RSS feed. I use the new file structure to generate a new sitemap. All automatic! Contentlayer offers easy integration with Next.js. I’ll show you how in the next sections. Using MDX as Data Let’s first explore how to use MDX as a data point. MDX offers support with custom parsers. You can express the meta data like this: YAML frontmatter ---
title: 'Blog One🚀'
publishedAt: 'February 4, 2022'
description: 'Learn how to build a Next.js blog with MDX and Contentlayer!'
cover: '/optimized/articles/blog-one/hero.webp'
---

Hey There👋

Welcome to Blog One✨ Let's learn together! You can see the meta data in YAML syntax is inside the block, and the body of the content follows in MDX syntax. Compared to the where MDX files were treated as pages, the new MDX file contains only meta data and content. --- old setup The next thing we need to do is to generate the blog page that renders the meta data and the content with the layout from component. <Blog /> Integrating Contentlayer in Next.js Now that we updated the MDX files to contain only data and content, Let’s move them into the directory. data The new file structure looks like this: my-blog
├── public
├── components
│   └── Blog.tsx
├── pages
│   ├── blogs
│   │   └── [slug].tsx
│   └── index.tsx
└── data
    └──blogs
       ├── blog-one.mdx
       ├── blog-two.mdx
       └── blog-three.mdx Notice that we replaced the MDX files in directory with a . We'll use this page to statically generate the blog pages . pages/blogs dynamic route [slug].tsx later Configuring Contentlayer Contentlayer offers seamless integration with Next.js. To install the dependencies: yarn add contentlayer next-contentlayer Contentlayer reads the configuration from . Let's create one. contentlayer.config.ts touch contentlayer.config.ts Inside the , we need to add instructions to tell Contentlayer how to parse: contentlayer.config.ts : namespace name : input files filePathPattern : content body type for parsing bodyType : meta data fields fields : derived meta data fields computedFields contentlayer.config.ts import { defineDocumentType, makeSource } from 'contentlayer/source-files'
import readingTime from 'reading-time'

export const Blog = defineDocumentType(() => ({
  name: 'Blog',
  filePathPattern: 'blogs/*.mdx',
  bodyType: 'mdx',
  fields: {
    title: { type: 'string', required: true },
    publishedAt: { type: 'string', required: true },
    description: { type: 'string', required: true },
    cover: { type: 'string', required: true },
  },
  computedFields: {
    readingTime: { type: 'json', resolve: (doc) => readingTime(doc.body.raw) },
    slug: {
      type: 'string',
      resolve: (doc) => doc._raw.sourceFileName.replace(/\.mdx/, ''),
    },
  },
}))

export default makeSource({
  contentDirPath: 'data',
  documentTypes: [Blog],
  mdx: {
    remarkPlugins: [],
    rehypePlugins: [],
  },
}) In the , we can compute data like from the content body🤩. I'm using for calculating the reading time based on word count. The field is for generating the dynamic route later in the page. computedFields readingTime reading-time slug [slug].tsx Under the hood, Contentlayer uses to parse MDX and YAML frontmatter and extract the content and data. If you're interested in the magic behind it, you can read more about and . These are the libraries uses internally. mdx-bundler gray-matter remark-mdx-frontmatter mdx-bundler At the end of the configuration, will then look for files that match pattern under directory and generate the blog data in directory at your project root. makeSource blogs/*.mdx data .contentlayer Lastly, wrap your Next.js configuration with to integrate with Next.js's live-reload and build process. next-contentlayer next.config.js const { withContentlayer } = require('next-contentlayer')

module.exports = withContentlayer()({
  // ... your Next.js config
}) Using Contentlayer data for Static Site Generation We are ready to use the generated data from Contentlayer and build the static pages🤩 All we need to do is to use from to build the dynamic routes with and use to pass the blog data to the page. allBlogs .contentlayer/data getStaticPaths getStaticProps [slug].tsx pages/blogs/[slug].tsx import { useMDXComponent } from 'next-contentlayer/hooks'
import { allBlogs } from '.contentlayer/data'
import type { Blog } from '.contentlayer/types'
import BlogLayout from '../../../components/Blog'

type BlogProps = {
  blog: Blog
}

export default function Blog({ blog }: BlogProps) {
  const Component = useMDXComponent(post.body.code)

  return (
    <BlogLayout {...blog}>
      <Component />
    </BlogLayout>
  )
}

export async function getStaticPaths() {
  return {
    paths: allBlogs.map((blog) => ({ params: { slug: blog.slug } })),
    fallback: false,
  }
}

export async function getStaticProps({ params }) {
  const blog = allBlogs.find((blog) => blog.slug === params.slug)
  return { props: { blog } }
} After the project is built, you’ll see the blogs available at , , and ✨ /blogs/blog-one /blogs/blog-two /blogs/blog-three Bonus: remark & rehype Plugins There are a lot more we can do with MDX by leveraging remark and rehype plugins in the . contentlayer.config.ts is an awesome plugin ecosystem that transforms markdown. remark is another powerful plugin ecosystem that transforms HTML. rehype They are two separate ecosystems but we can convert remark to rehype and generate HTML markup. The transformation looks like this: MDX ----> remark AST ------> rehype AST --------> HTML
    parse            convert            stringify Contentlayer takes care of the flow. All we need to do is add the plugins to provide instruction for the transformations. I’m using the following plugins: to support . remark-gfm GitHub Flavored Markdown and to render heading links. rehype-slug rehype-autolink-headings to render syntax highlighting in code blocks. rehype-prism-plus to render code block titles. rehype-code-titles to provide accessibility to emojis. rehype-accessible-emojis contentlayer.config.ts + import remarkGfm from 'remark-gfm'
+ import rehypeSlug from 'rehype-slug'
+ import rehypeAutolinkHeadings from 'rehype-autolink-headings'
+ import rehypeCodeTitles from 'rehype-code-titles'
+ import rehypePrism from 'rehype-prism-plus'
+ import { rehypeAccessibleEmojis } from 'rehype-accessible-emojis'

// ...

export default makeSource({
  mdx: {
-    remarkPlugins: [],
+    remarkPlugins: [remarkGfm],
-    rehypePlugins: [],
+    rehypePlugins: [
+      rehypeSlug,
+      rehypeCodeTitles,
+      rehypePrism,
+      rehypeAutolinkHeadings,
+      rehypeAccessibleEmojis,
    ],
  },
}) Contentlayer Applications There are more things we can do with the data. Application #1: RSS Feed I can now write a script to generate an RSS feed base on the data! allBlogs scripts/rss.mjs import { writeFileSync } from 'fs'
import RSS from 'rss'
import { allBlogs } from '.contentlayer/data'

const feed = new RSS({
  title: "My Blogs",
  feed_url: 'localhost:3000/rss.xml',
  site_url: 'localhost:3000',
})

allBlogs.map((blog) => ({
  title: blog.title,
  description: blog.description,
  url: `localhost:3000/blogs/${blog.slug}`
  date: blog.publishedAt,
})).forEach((item) => {
  feed.item(item)
})

writeFileSync('./public/rss.xml', feed.xml({ indent: true })) Application #2: XML Sitemap It’s easier to write a script for sitemap generation. All we need is the file structure in the and directories. data page scripts/sitemap.mjs import { writeFileSync } from 'fs'
import { globby } from 'globby'
import prettier from 'prettier'

const pages = await globby([
  'pages/*.tsx',
  'data/**/*.mdx',
  '!pages/_*.tsx',
])

const urlTags = pages
  .map((file) =>
    file
      .replace('pages', '')
      .replace('data/content', '')
      .replace('.tsx', '')
      .replace('.mdx', '')
  )
  .map((path) => (path === '/index' ? '/' : path))
  .map(
    (path) => `
      <url>
          <loc>localhost:3000${path}</loc>
      </url>
    `
  )
  .join('')

const sitemap = `
  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
      ${urlTags}
  </urlset>
`

const prettierConfig = await prettier.resolveConfig('./prettierrc')
const formatted = prettier.format(sitemap, {
  ...prettierConfig,
  parser: 'html',
})

writeFileSync('public/sitemap.xml', formatted) Run both scripts after building the project and automatically generate a new RSS feed and sitemap. In , add: package.json "scripts": {
+    "sitemap": "node scripts/sitemap.mjs",
+    "rss": "node scripts/rss.mjs",
+    "postbuild": "yarn sitemap && yarn rss",
  }, Final Thoughts Building Static sites with Next.js becomes so effortless with MDX and Contentlayer. MDX combines with remark and rehype ecosystem enriches the possibility of building consistent pages with Markdown. Contentlayer makes data and content in MDX files available to consume in Next.js projects. If you’re exploring ways to build your own static sites, check out the libraries mentioned earlier. It not only reduces the time to market but also is a lot of fun to build!🦄 This article is originally posted on . Daw-Chih’s website

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