Reading Time

[Romanx]

Hey,

I've just migrated my blog over from Wyam to Statiq which was a great experience. The usability and tooling is fantastic and have enjoyed using it.

One of the things I wrote for my blog in Wyam was the reading time plugin which you can find here.

I added a helper method for registering the reading time plugin into the Wyam blog recipe with a helper like this:

public static IPipelineCollection AddReadingTimeMeta(this IPipelineCollection pipelineCollection, uint wordsPerMinute) 
{
    if (!pipelineCollection.TryGetValue(BlogPosts, out var blogPipeline))
    {
        throw new Exception("Reading time meta can currently only be added to a blog template with this helper!");
    }

    blogPipeline.InsertBefore(WriteMetadata, new ReadingTime(wordsPerMinute));

    return pipelineCollection;
}

With Statiq there isn't an easy method of doing the same. The closest i've gotten is this:

public static Bootstrapper AddReadingTimeMeta(this Bootstrapper bootstrapper)
{
    return bootstrapper.ModifyPipeline(nameof(Statiq.Web.Pipelines.Inputs), pipeline =>
    {
        var ifMod = pipeline.ProcessModules[3] as ExecuteIf;
        var res = ifMod[0].InsertBeforeFirst<SetMetadata>(new ExecuteIf(Config.FromDocument(doc => doc.MediaTypeEquals(MediaTypes.Markdown)))
        {
            new ReadingTimeModule()
        });
    });
}

This works when you have access to Statiq.Core but following the advice and trying to use Statiq.Common you're unable to extend the Bootstrapper in this way since you can't access ModifyPipeline or target modules like ExecuteIf.

Let me also say I'm not a fan of accessing the modules by index, a way of targeting the pipeline for blog posts by name like Wyam would be useful or even a recursive way of finding a module to insert after? Just wanted to start a dialog on if there's a nicer way of providing a standard registration knowing a common pipeline layout.

[daveaglick]

I totally agree registering additional modules by pipeline (and especially by pipeline index) isn't the best way. I've been trying to avoid this by adding "hooks" at various places where it would make sense to inject new modules. For example, in Statiq Web the modules related to rendering or processing different types of files (JSON, YAML, Razor, Markdown, etc.) are not based on an extensible templates concept that uses media types. Under the hood this is essentially just a big switch statement at the appropriate point in the pipeline that calls out the the template modules, but it short-circuits the pipeline and avoids the user having to inject the modules directly. I wonder if a similar injection point makes sense for things like this - something like AddInputMetadataModules().

Calculated Metadata

The other alternative that might be even more appropriate is not to base this on modules at all. Metadata in Statiq is way more powerful than in Wyam and can be a delegate or even compiled script. In this case, I could see doing something like:

public static Bootstrapper AddReadingTimeMeta(this Bootstrapper bootstrapper) =>
    bootstrapper.AddSetting("ReadingTime", Config.FromDocument(doc => CalculateReadingTime(doc)));

private static TimeSpan CalculateReadingTime(IDocument doc)
{
    // ...
}

That has the exact same effect of adding a "ReadingTime" metadata value to the document as the module approach would, but it has some advantages:

• The metadata value is evaluated lazily so that documents which don't ask for their reading time don't need to have it calculated.
• It can be easily overwritten per-document by redefining the value in front matter.
• It's easier to reason about than modules IMO and if you end up with a lot of these little metadata helpers, it's also easier to manage.

Shortcodes

There's also a whole other approach that could work too. If we consider the reading time as part of the page and not necessarily front matter, something like a shortcode could work. That would let you write something like <?# ReadingTime /?> in the page. Writing a shortcode is similar to writing a module, so most of your existing module code could be repurposed.