Allard Hendriksen | CI @ CWI

Creating a new ox-hugo blog post manually can be a bit of a pain. There are several properties you have to set for the org section headline of which the most important is :EXPORT_FILE_NAME:. Of course, setting the export file name automatically can be automated, and this is described in this blog post.

The instructions here are taken from / inspired by the ox-hugo documentation.

First, in the use-package declaration in the init.el file, add the following defun:

(use-package ox-hugo
  :after ox
  :ensure t
  :config
  (progn
    (defun org-hugo-new-subtree-post-capture-template ()
      "Returns `org-capture' template string for new Hugo post.
See `org-capture-templates' for more information."
      (let* ((title (read-from-minibuffer "Post Title: ")) ;Prompt to enter the post title
	     (fname (org-hugo-slug title)))
	(mapconcat #'identity
		   `(
		     ,(concat "* TODO " title)
		     ":PROPERTIES:"
		     ,(concat ":EXPORT_FILE_NAME: " fname)
		     ":END:"
		     "%?\n")          ;Place the cursor here finally
		   "\n"))))
  )

This will load ox-hugo after the org export back-end (ox) has been loaded, and will define the org-hugo-new-subtree-post-capture-template function. This function creates a capture template based on a title. Note that it automatically creates the blog post filename, which is exactly what we wanted.

Second, add the following to the use-package declaration of org-mode:

(use-package org
  ;; ...
  :custom
  ;; ...
  (org-capture-templates
   '(("t" "To Do / Next Actions")
     ;; ...
     ("h" "Hugo post"
      entry (file+olp "~/projects/blog/content-org/blog.org" "Drafts")
      (function org-hugo-new-subtree-post-capture-template))
     ))
  ;; ...
  )

The declaration shows how org-capture-templates is customized and a h hotkey is added to create a new Hugo post. The entry is added to the Drafts heading in ~/projects/blog/content-org/blog.org, which is where I store my blog. When I invoke the capture template using C-c c h, I am first prompted for a blog title and can then write my post:

** TODO Test post
:PROPERTIES:
:EXPORT_FILE_NAME: test-post
:END:
This is a test post.