Jekyll site uses absolute urls; deploy previews navigate to main site

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1

I’m new to both netlify and jekyll (and static site generators in general). I’ve got my site nearly built (see https://angry-tereshkova-959566.netlify.com/.

Now I want to test my forms, without consuming lots of paid form submissions. I created a brand and a PR in GitHub, and netlify created a deploy-preview at https://5e3a236b37e50a000827cfa9–angry-tereshkova-959566.netlify.com

But my template (Feeling Responsive) makes some absolute references; it defines url in _config.yml and references {site.url} in some places.

Is there an easy fix for this?

I read Incorect url domain prefix in build preview links, but that applies to Hugo and I did not understand how to interpret it for my situation.

2

Hi, @bolaurent. Welcome to our Netlify community site.

There is a --baseurl command line flag which I think (I’m not a Jekyll expert) works the same way. I found this flag in the documentation here:

So, I believe a build command below might work for deploy previews (in netlify.toml):

[context.deploy-preview]
  command = "jekyll build --baseurl  $DEPLOY_PRIME_URL"

Would you be willing to please test that and let us know if it solves this issue?

3

I haven’t tried that, but I don’t think it will work. See Clearing Up Confusion Around baseurl – Again | By Parker. What needs to be changed is “url”, not “baseurl”.

I am managing the url difference between local dev and netlify by loading two _config.yml files, with the first specifying url: ‘https://angry-tereshkova-959566.netlify.com’, and the second overwrites that with url: ‘http://localhost:4000’. This doesn’t work for a preview because I cannot predict the url.

jekyll build --config _config.yml,_config_dev.yml --watch
4

With the hugo example, it allows the passing of that setting via the command build command and Netlify provides an environment variable which can be used in our build environment.

I don’t know if there is a way to do this with jekyll or not. One workaround would be to modify the jekyll config file and insert this environment variable ($DEPLOY_PRIME_URL) into that YAML file during the build.

This might be done using a two part build command:

  • a script that programmatically inserts the $DEPLOY_PRIME_URL value into the YAML file
  • the actually build command

For example:

script-that-inserts.sh && jekyll build

Another solution is to modify the theme to use absolute URLs for other assets.

5

That seems helpful; I’ll give it a try and report back on how it works out.

Thanks Luke

6

The technique I am using to run locally is to load the main _config.yml file, followed by a _config_dev.yml file that overwrites the site parameter.

I think I just need to have the build script write a one-line yml file that only sets site, and consume it last.

_config.yml:

url: 'https://angry-tereshkova-959566.netlify.com'

_config_dev.yml:

url: 		'http://localhost:4000'
7

So arg, I’ve been googling and asking, and for some reason a lot of people want to have access to env vars in jekyll but no one seems to be succeeding.

It seems like if I can run a line in CLI that creates a temp _conf_build.yml file I can load it and overwrite site.url. I’ll try to learn about that now. As a newbie, I have been able to use netlify with almost zero learning; I just made a local jekyll site, pushed it to a repo, and bam! netlify built and served it for me. So nice.

8

Ok, so if I can figure out how to get the netlify build to do this (this is bash):

printf "site: %s" "$DEPLOY_PRIME_URL" > _config_netlify.yml

and then run jekyll like this:

bundle exec jekyll server --config _config.yml,_config_netlify.yml

I’ll get what I need.

Next I have to study build options in netlify.

9

Is there a file system and current working directory at the moment of deploy?

1 Like
10

Answering my own question, the following works:

printf "site: %s" "$DEPLOY_URL" > _config_netlify.yml; jekyll build --config _config.yml,_config_netlify.yml
1 Like
11

Thanks for sharing your solution! That might really help someone else :slight_smile:

12

I had to tweak this a little to make it work in my setup.
netlify.toml:

[context.deploy-preview]
  command = "printf \"url: %s\" \"$DEPLOY_PRIME_URL\" > _config_netlify.yml; jekyll build --config _config.yml,_config_netlify.yml"

Uses ‘url’ rather than ‘site’.
DEPLOY_PRIME_URL is the ‘pretty’ url, DEPLOY_URL works too, but is not the same as the review app one. - Build environment variables | Netlify Docs

13

thank you for sharing!