Control Structures

Flow Control

As in other languages, control structures are statements that dynamically determine the flow of rendering based on the evaluation of content and variables. Automad knows four different control structures: for, foreach, if and with. In contrast to function calls, control structures always wrap a block of code and can therefore also be nested.

Syntax

A control structure starts with an opening statement and is closed by an end statement. Some control structures also accept an options object:

<@ foreach in filelist { width: 400 } @>
  <# Code to be executed for every file goes here. #>
<@ end @>

All control structures except for can also have an optional else block that is processed in case a list is empty, a condition is not met or a page or file doesn't exist:

<@ foreach in pagelist @>
  <# Code to be executed for every page. #>
<@ else @>
  <# Code to be executed in case the pagelist is empty. #>
<@ end @>

Available Control Structures

StatementDescription
forIterates a range of integer values.
foreachIterates collections and lists of files and changes the context while iterating pages.
ifProcesses a block of code conditionally.
withProcesses a block of code within the context of a given page or file.
Filters for
for
The for loop iterates a range of integer values. Within the code block of the loop, the current value is represented by the :i runtime variable.
foreach
The foreach loop iterates collections and lists of files. Depending on the type of list, Automad provides different runtime variables within the code block of the loop to refer to the current item. The :i variable always contains the index of the current iteration.
if
The if statement allows for conditional processing of code blocks. In case the given expression evaluates to false, an optional else block is processed instead.
with
The with statement processes a block of code within the context of a given page or file. When using the URL of a page or one of the keywords prev and next as argument, the context changes to that page. When using a file path, the related runtime variables can be used and images can be resized or cropped directly. In case there is no matching page or file, an optional else block is processed instead.