My Template for creating new blog posts using Node.js, Astro, and Markdown

by David Yates

In my journey to be a more productive developer, I am always looking for ways to overcome barriers to productivity. One of the biggest barriers I have found is the time it takes to create a new blog post. I have tried a few different approaches, but I have found that the best way to create a new blog post is to use a template. This allows me to focus on the content of the post, rather than the formatting, copying and pasting that it usually takes to make a new blog post.

I’m currently using Astro for my blog, and it has been refreshing moving back to using pure markdown files for my blog posts. I have found that I am able to focus more on the content of my posts, rather than worrying about the whole deployment process.

Back when I first started with Gatsby I used a little node package I found that would generate me a new blog post template. I’ve moved on a bit since then, preferring to roll my own little scripts when and where I can, and here’s an example of one.

The Script

Add a file called new-post.js to your root directory with the following contents:

const fs = require("fs");
const slugify = require("slugify");
const dayjs = require("dayjs");
const now = dayjs().toISOString();

const title = process.argv[2];
if (!title) {
  console.error("Please provide a title for the post.");
  process.exit(1);
}

const slug = slugify(title, {
  lower: true,
  strict: true,
  locale: "en",
});

const filename = `${now.slice(0, 10)}-${slug}.md`;
const content = `---
title: ${title}
author: YOUR NAME HERE
pubDatetime: ${now}
featured: false
draft: true
tags:
  - tag
ogImage: ""
description: ""
---

WRITE_YOUR_POST_HERE
`;

const filepath = `src/content/blog/${filename}`;
fs.writeFileSync(filepath, content);
console.log(`Created file: ${filepath}`);

Then, update your yarn scripts in package.json to include the following:

"new-post": "node new-post.js"

You’ll need to install a few dependencies as well:

yarn add slugify dayjs

After that, simply run yarn new-post "My New Post" and you’ll have a new markdown file in your src/content/blog directory with the correct frontmatter and a slugified filename.

Easy peasy.

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