Markdown table sucks. Let's use jekyll's data files instead

Posted on June 11, 2015  •  1 minutes  • 124 words

Creating a table in markdown sucks, especially if the table is quite big with some styled elements. Back before knowing data files, I came up with a plugin to help with this. First, I create folder to keep my JSON data files. I wrapped it in a simple plugin to generate inline javascript call (AJAX) to render the table upon finish loading.

{% jsontable myjsonfilename %}

This works as expected but it’s only feasible for simple table structure. Sometimes, I want a specific table structure for a specific post. Data files are perfect for this purpose.

Data files structure is simple, easy to maintain and accessible throughout your blog via site.data.datafilename.

There’s an example on jekyll’s documentation if you want to take a look.