Create Jekyll posts from the command line

I got tired on creating new files manually for each new post a write so I put together this little command line task with Thor.

It creates a new file in the _posts directory with today's date, parses the parameters to command as the post's title and adds that as a slug to the new file. It then writes a default yaml template to the file (as specified in the script).

Running thor jekyll:new New and shiny post will for example create the file _posts/2012-12-28-new-and-shiny-post.md, populate it with an yaml template and finally open the file in my favorite editor.

How to

Add the following to your Gemfile:

gem 'thor'
gem 'stringex'

Run bundle install and create a jekyll.thor file with the following contents:

require "stringex"
class Jekyll < Thor
  desc "new", "create a new post"
  method_option :editor, :default => "subl"
  def new(*title)
    title = title.join(" ")
    date = Time.now.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')
    filename = "_posts/#{date}-#{title.to_url}.md"

    if File.exist?(filename)
      abort("#{filename} already exists!")
    end

    puts "Creating new post: #{filename}"
    open(filename, 'w') do |post|
      post.puts "---"
      post.puts "templateKey: blog-post"
      post.puts "title: \"#{title}\""
      post.puts "tags:"
      post.puts " -"
      post.puts "---"
    end

    system(options[:editor], filename)
  end
end

Use the new command:

$ thor jekyll:new The title of the new post

You can even specify which editor to open the new file with:

$ thor jekyll:new The title of the new post --editor=vim

The default editor is Sublime Text 2, just change on line 4 in jekyll.thor if an other editor is preferred.