Configure your card previews

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What are cards?#

CloudCannon uses cards to represent your data. A card is a configurable UI element that gives you a preview of that data. Depending on the type of data stored, this could include an image, title, subtitle, icon, and metadata.

Cards appear in different places across the app, including:

1. Snippets
   • Hugo Shortcodes
   • Eleventy Shortcodes
2. Snippet Picker
3. Structures
4. Structure Picker
5. Select-style inputs
6. Object inputs
7. Collection file lists

These cards are configurable using the preview key.

Configure your card previews#

The preview configuration has a number of different keys which correspond to different parts of the card display.

Preview reference#

preview:
  icon: nature_people
  icon_color:
    - key: color
    - '#ff0000'

{
  "preview": {
    "icon": "nature_people",
    "icon_color": [
      {
        "key": "color"
      },
      "#ff0000"
    ]
  }
}

module.exports = {
  preview: {
    icon: "nature_people",
    icon_color: [
      {
        key: "color"
      },
      "#ff0000"
    ]
  }
};

metadata reference#

Metadata is a great way to show related data in the card.

preview:
  metadata:
    icon: nature_people
    icon_color:
      - key: color
      - '#ff0000'

{
  "preview": {
    "metadata": {
      "icon": "nature_people",
      "icon_color": [
        {
          "key": "color"
        },
        "#ff0000"
      ]
    }
  }
}

module.exports = {
  preview: {
    metadata: {
      icon: "nature_people",
      icon_color: [
        {
          key: "color"
        },
        "#ff0000"
      ]
    }
  }
};

gallery reference#

The gallery will render an icon if it is defined, an image over the icon once loaded and if neither exist the text will be displayed.

preview:
  gallery:
    icon: nature_people
    icon_color:
      - key: color
      - '#ff0000'

{
  "preview": {
    "gallery": {
      "icon": "nature_people",
      "icon_color": [
        {
          "key": "color"
        },
        "#ff0000"
      ]
    }
  }
}

module.exports = {
  preview: {
    gallery: {
      icon: "nature_people",
      icon_color: [
        {
          key: "color"
        },
        "#ff0000"
      ]
    }
  }
};

How cascading options work#

Most of the keys within preview are the same type of structure, which we call cascading options. This is either an Array or a single value of the following types:

• A String of the exact value (e.g "My Item")
• A reference to a key within the connected item (e.g key: title in YAML or { "key": "title" } in JSON)
• A String with placeholders that will be replaced with values (e.g. template: {date|date_long} in YAML or { "template": "{date|date_long}" } in JSON)

# String option
preview_option: Fallback String

# or, Array cascading option
preview_option:
- key: some_key
- key: object.subkey
- template: '{date|date_long}'
- Fallback String

When using an Array each item is read in order. If no content is found, the next item in the array is used. If no content is valid, the corresponding preview option will be hidden.

Below is an example of some data representing a Figure that needs previewed:

_type: figure
image_path: /image.png
alt_text: An image

When displaying this Figure we want to:

1. Always display the image icon (A String example)
2. In the text, display the image_path key falling back to the String ‘Image missing’ (An Array example)
3. In the subtext, display the alt_text key falling back to the String ‘No alternative text’ (Another Array example)

Writing this as a set of preview options will look like this:

preview:
  icon: image
  text:
    - key: image_path
    - Image missing
  subtext:
    - key: alt_text
    - No alternative text

Template strings in previews#

You can use template strings in your card previews. Template strings are a mixture of literal text and dynamic placeholders that are replaced with data. You can use template strings to populate your card previews with more complex strings.

The template key can reference keys from within the object you want to preview.

Let's walk through an example. We want to add the author of a file to the card metadata field. We want the metadata field to have a person icon and the text "By [author name]". If no author name is available, the text should read "No author".

To achieve this, we will create an array of metadata.text options. The first array item is our template string, with the value of template set to By {author.name}. The second array item is the string No author.

collections_config:
  posts:
    preview:
      metadata:
        - text:
            - template: By {author.name}
            - No author
          icon: person

{
  "collections_config": {
    "posts": {
      "preview": {
        "metadata": [
          {
            "text": [
              {
                "template": "By {author.name}"
              },
              "No author"
            ],
            "icon": "person"
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

module.exports = {
  collections_config: {
    posts: {
      preview: {
        metadata: [
          {
            text: [
              {
                template: "By {author.name}"
              },
              "No author"
            ],
            icon: "person"
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  }
};

In the above example, if the author.name key in our object is set to "Heather", the card preview will display "By Heather" in the metadata field.

For more information, including a list of all available placeholder values, read our documentation on template strings.

Picker specific options#

There are two states where cards can be displayed:

1. A card connected to an existing item with it’s own data (e.g an instance of a snippet or structure on a page)
2. A card used in a “picker” where the type of item needs to be selected (e.g. adding a snippet or structure)

When a card is used in a “picker”, it is useful to override the options from the preview config. For this we use the picker_preview config which merges on top of the preview options. The options within picker_preview are the same as the options in preview.

For the same figure example we used above we want to:

1. Show the String ‘Figure’ for the text
2. Disable the subtext to prevent showing the String ‘No alternative text’

figure:
  picker_preview:
    text: Figure # Used in a picker
    subtext: false # Disables the subtext in the picker
  preview: # Used in each figure item
    icon: image
    text:
      - key: image_path
      - Image missing
    subtext:
      - key: alt_text
      - No alternative text