I'm moving a website from a different site generator to DocPad and am trying to understand the getBlock('meta') feature. Figuring out getBlock('scripts') and getBlock('styles') was pretty easy since I only needed to pass individual resource locations to the .add method in an array with each location taking up a single space. Generating meta tags on the other hand seems like it has to be slightly more complicated since there are two components to each tag: a name and a value.
My question is, how do I pass meta tag names and values to getBlock('meta').add() in order for it to create some meta tags for me?
Also, I've noticed getBlock('meta') creates a tag by default:
<meta http-equiv="X-Powered-By" content="DocPad"/>
I prefer not to have in my markup. I am all for attributing the awesome DocPad project, however I prefer to do it in a different way and in a different location. How can I prevent that tag from being generated?
Thank you.
Just forget about it.
Hand write your own meta. In your layout.
As long as you do not need page specific meta you are good to go.
And if you need it than you can always change source code of DocPad.
It seems to me that docpad does nothing with arguments given to getBlock('meta').add(). I had a look at the source and the other blocks all generate some block-specific HTML on add() while the meta block doesn't.
My guess is that docpad automagically collects Metadata from the documents and inserts them into the meta block in some other way.
I think at the moment the only possible way to add meta data to your site is using either the documents or the docpad.coffee file.
@przemo_li and @Rafael Epplee are right, by a standard installation the meta block will only output that, if you have the time to submit a pull request to make that powered-by meta element optional via a docpad configuration option - I'd happily accept it.
However, the point of it isn't just to output that powered-by element, but to enable plugins to inject their own meta data - I'm not aware of any plugins that do so yet, but a great example could be given from @Rafael's example - where you define meta element via your document's meta data, then use a plugin to inject them into the meta block, allowing you to have page specific meta data easily. Another example is perhaps injecting the charset/encoding meta element appropriately depending on the document's encoding, rather than the layout always using the standard utf8 encoding.
So while it isn't that useful now, one day a plugin may need it.