Ampersand

Plug-and-play flat file markdown blog tool for your Laravel-project. Create an article or blog-section on your site without the hassle of setting up tables, models or your own flat file-system.

Built upon spatie/sheets to handle the markdown-files and YAML-front matter parsing.

Note: This package is built for quick and easy setup and use – don't expect a fully featured CMS.

🛠 Install and configure

Require package:

$ composer require olssonm/ampersand

Publish config-files and views:

$ php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Olssonm\Ampersand\AmpersandServiceProvider"

In config/ampersand.php you can now customize the settings to your liking. Views are available at resources/views/vendor/ampersand

✏️ Writing posts

Filename format

All posts should be stores in your posts_path-directory with the filename format of 2021-03-30.my-post.md, i.e. {date:Y-m-d}.{slug}.md.

The slug is what determines at what URL your post will be available at.

Artisan command

You can quickly create a new post via the artisan command:

php artisan ampersand:new

YAML front matter

Posts can contain any number of attributes via YAML-front matter:

---
title: This is a new post
date: '2020-01-01 20:00:01'
cover: https://amazingimages.com/my-cover.jpg
---

My post in **Markdown**

🖥 Displaying posts

Two views are shipped with this package; an index-view and a show-view (used for single posts). They are located in /resources/vendor/views/ampersand after installation and are fully customizable.

In index.blade.php a collection of post-objects is available via the $posts-variable. It behaves much as a standard Eloquent-collection.

@foreach ($posts as $post)
    <h2>{{ $post->title }}</h2>
    <div>
        {!! $post->contents !!}
    </div>
@endforeach

Pagination-links are also available:

{{ $posts->links() }}

The Post-object contains all your front matter attributes as well as slug, date and contents.

{{ $post->slug }} // my-post
{{ $post->date->format('Y-m-d') }} // 2021-03-30
{{ $post->contents }} // <p>My post in <strong>markdown</strong></p>
{{ $post->cover }} // https://amazingimages.com/my-cover.jpg

Retrieve posts in your application

You can retrieve posts and filter them as a collection anywhere in your application using the Post-model:

use Olssonm\Ampersand\Models\Post;

// Reject posts where is_draft is true or has a date in the future
$posts = Post::all()->reject(function($item) {
    return $item->is_draft || $post->date->lessThan(now());
});

The posts are sorted by descending date per default, so to get the latest post:

// Get first post
$post = Post::all()->first();

🚦 Routes

The package routes are ampersand.index and ampersand.show:

{{ route('ampersand.index') }} // http://mysite.test/blog

@foreach ($posts as $post)
    // The show-route accepts either a Olssonm\Ampersand\Models\Post-object
    // or a string; the post's slug
    {{ route('ampersand.show', $post) }} // http://mysite.test/blog/post-slug
    {{ route('ampersand.show', 'post-slug') }} // http://mysite.test/blog/post-slug
@endforeach

Defining your own routes

The default routes are registered with the ampersand-name and the default web-middleware group.

If you by any reason want to override this (for example if you want to have your articles behind a login or maybe you don't use the standard web-middleware group), you may set register_routes to false in ampersand.php, and then register them yourself:

// /routes/web.php
use Olssonm\Ampersand\Http\Controllers\PostController;

Route::group(['middleware' => 'can:read'], function() {
    Route::get('/articles', [PostController::class, 'index'])->name('article.index');
    Route::get('/articles/{post}', [PostController::class, 'show'])->name('article.show');
}]);

// A link to the blog index in some view
{{ route('article.index') }} // http://mysite.test/articles

See it in action

Sites in the wild that uses Ampersand

esignering.se/blogg

Do you use Ampersand and want your site featured here? Submit a PR!

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see the LICENSE.md for more information.

© 2021-2026 Marcus Olsson.