Fix Frontmatter Default Values and Closing Delimiters

Summary

Why Care

Implementation

Changes Made

• Modified Files:
  • tidyverse/observers/scripts/assert-frontmatter-template.ts: Fixed serialization and patching logic
  • tidyverse/observers/templates/essays.ts: Fixed date handling in addDateCreatedWrapper
• New Files:
  • tidyverse/tidy-up/tidy-one-property/remove-one-property/removeChangesKeyValuePair.cjs: Script to remove unwanted changes: properties
  • tidyverse/tidy-up/assure-tidy-frontmatter-delimiters/assureClosingFrontmatterDelimiter.cjs: Script to ensure proper closing delimiters

Technical Details

assert-frontmatter-template.ts

• Enhanced the serializeFrontmatterToYAML function to:
  • Clean up unexpected properties like changes before serialization
  • Handle empty arrays correctly
  • Skip object properties to prevent [object Object] from appearing in output
• Improved patching logic to:
  • Properly extract date strings from objects returned by defaultValueFn
  • Ensure all required fields have values, even if they weren't detected as missing or empty
  • Add special handling for date fields to convert objects to strings

// Clean up any unexpected or malformed properties
const cleanedObj = { ...obj };
// Remove 'changes' property if it exists at the top level
if ('changes' in cleanedObj) {
  delete cleanedObj.changes;
}

// Ensure we don't store objects for date fields - convert to string if needed
if (defTyped.type === 'date' && typeof defaultValue === 'object' && defaultValue !== null) {
  // If it's an object with a date property, extract that
  if (defaultValue.date) {
    updatedFrontmatter[key] = defaultValue.date;
  } 
  // If it's an object with changes.date_created, extract that
  else if (defaultValue.changes && defaultValue.changes.date_created) {
    updatedFrontmatter[key] = defaultValue.changes.date_created;
  }
  // Otherwise use today's date as fallback
  else {
    const now = new Date();
    updatedFrontmatter[key] = `${now.getFullYear()}-${String(now.getMonth() + 1).padStart(2, '0')}-${String(now.getDate()).padStart(2, '0')}`;
  }
} else {
  updatedFrontmatter[key] = defaultValue;
}

essays.ts

• Fixed the addDateCreatedWrapper function to properly extract the date string from the object returned by addDateCreated
• Ensured that date_authored_initial_draft has the same value as date_created

// addDateCreated returns { changes: { date_created?: string } } 
// but we need a simple string for defaultValueFn
const result = addDateCreated(frontmatter ?? {}, filePath);

// Extract date_created if available
if (result.changes && result.changes.date_created) {
  return result.changes.date_created;
}

removeChangesKeyValuePair.cjs

• Created a script to remove the changes: key-value pair from all Markdown files in the essays directory
• Ensures proper preservation of the closing frontmatter delimiter

// Helper to extract frontmatter block
function extractFrontmatter(markdownContent) {
  const fmRegex = /^---\n([\s\S]*?)\n---/;
  const match = markdownContent.match(fmRegex);
  if (!match) {
    return { success: false };
  }
  const frontmatterString = match[1];
  const startIndex = match.index + 4; // after '---\n'
  const endIndex = match.index + match[0].length - 4; // before '\n---'
  return { frontmatterString, startIndex, endIndex, success: true };
}

assureClosingFrontmatterDelimiter.cjs

• Created a script to ensure all Markdown files have a proper closing frontmatter delimiter
• Identifies files with missing closing delimiters and adds them correctly

// Find the frontmatter section
const frontmatterMatch = markdownContent.match(/^---\n([\s\S]*?)(\n---|\n\s*\n)/);
if (!frontmatterMatch) {
  console.log(`[SKIPPING] ${markdownFilePath} - Could not parse frontmatter`);
  continue;
}

// Check if the frontmatter is properly closed with a '---' delimiter
const hasProperClosing = frontmatterMatch[2].trim() === '---';
if (hasProperClosing) {
  continue; // Already has proper closing delimiter
}

Integration Points

• These changes ensure that all 38 essay files in the content collection have properly formatted frontmatter with all required fields populated with appropriate defaults
• The scripts can be reused for future content processing tasks to ensure consistent frontmatter formatting
• The improved serialization function in assert-frontmatter-template.ts ensures that frontmatter is always properly formatted, even when dealing with complex data types

Documentation

• The issue resolution document at /content/lost-in-public/issue-resolution/Fixing-Markdown-Frontmatter-Default-Values.md provides a comprehensive overview of the problem and the solution
• The scripts include detailed comments explaining their purpose and functionality