Data blocks #

data blocks define data requirements for the template. The block signature includes the name of the data source that will execute the data block and load the data from external source. Fabric supports many data sources through its plugin ecosystem.

# Root-level definition of a data block
data <data-source-name> "<block-name>" {
  ...
}

document "foobar" {

  # In-document definition of a data block
  data <data-source-name> "<block-name>" {
    ...
  }

}

Both a data source name and a block name are required. The pair makes an unique identifier for the block.

The data blocks must be placed either on a root-level of the file or on a root-level of the document.

When Fabric starts rendering the template, the data sources for the data blocks are executed and the results are placed under the block names in the context (see Context for more details), available for queries.

Supported arguments #

The arguments provided in the block are either generic arguments or data-source-specific input parameters.

Generic arguments #

• config: (optional) a reference to a named configuration block for the data source or a content provider. If provided, it takes precedence over the default configuration. See Data source configuration for the details.

Data source arguments #

Data source arguments differ per data source. See the documentation for a specific data source (find it in supported data sources) for the details on the supported arguments.

Supported nested blocks #

• meta: (optional) a block containing metadata for the block.
• config: (optional) an inline configuration for the block. If provided, it takes precedence over the config argument and default configuration for the content provider.

References #

See References for the details about referencing data blocks.

Example #

config data csv {
  delimiter = ";"
}

data csv "events_a" {
  path = "/tmp/events-a.csv"
}

document "test-document" {

   data ref {
     base = data.csv.events_a
   }

   data csv "events_b" {
     config {
       delimiter = ",";
     }

     path = "/tmp/events-b.csv"
   }
}

Next steps #

See Content Blocks documentation to learn how to define content, like text paragraphs, tables, graphs and images, in the template.