Disable native creation of collection based on tags

[sielay]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Currently tags works as reserved field in the frontmatter that assigns the page to the collections matching a tag name. For values tags: [ hello, World ] it will populate following collections:

{% for collection in collections | keys %}
  - {{ collection }}
{% endfor %}

  - all
  - hello
  - World

It does not hurt much with different approaches to taxonomy but pollutes collections dictionary. For instance, I have a blog with a few hundred posts and about a hundred tags. I chose to approach that instead of polluting collections dictionary nests taxonomies in the following way:

  - [taxonomy-name]
    - [taxonomy-value]
      - pages

i.e.

  - all
  - tags
    - hello
    - World
  - categories
    - blog
    - project
  - calendar
    - 2020
    - 2019

If we keep existing behaviour mixing both approaches results in messy collection like:

  - all
  - tags
    - hello
    - World
    - ...100 other tags
  - categories
    - blog
    - project
    ... many other categories
  - calendar
    - 2020
    - 2019
    ... more dates
  - hello
  - World
  - ...100 other tags

Describe the solution you'd like

I'd like to provide to the config toggle that prevents eleventy from populating collections based on tags field.

Adding such function would allow also to provide predefined taxonomy strategies as npx runnable zero-config libraries (in the same way we do npx @11ty/eleventy

Describe alternatives you've considered

I considered keeping the existing state. Anyhow, I find it limited and too opinionated for generic use of a library like eleventy.

Additional context

• plugin I develop to manage taxonomies in extensible way https://github.com/sielay/eleventy-plugin-blog
• not fully ready yet blog that will use features of that plugin in full of its power https://github.com/sielay/sielay.com/blob/master/.eleventy.js
• I will work on PR for the problem.

[edwardhorsford]

I've long wondered whether the auto-tags collections should really be collected under collections.tags.[] rather than on the parent collections namespace - tags would still be reserved, but it wouldn't add so many things to the collections.

There may have been a thread on this before, but I couldn't find it.

[sielay]

You can take that approach or you can keep 11ty less opinionated and leave it to plugins/users.

[vwkd]

Would be nice if "tags" could simply be renamed by the user in the .eleventy.js config. This would allow for a broader use case, since it also supports people who want to use "tags" for their own fields but also use the collections functionality just under a different name.

[zachleat]

@sielay I think I’m agreeing with @vwkd here that an option to rename would be better (with a permalink style false to disable).

I’d start by adding a keys entry for this and then a Configuration API method to override it

keys are here https://github.com/11ty/eleventy/blob/master/src/defaultConfig.js#L41

[sielay]

Happy to make PR for it

[sielay]

Though I think we speak here about two separate features. One thing is moving tags aside, another thing is that tags themselves pollute the collections.

[edwardhorsford]

I might even say three things!

1. Ability to disable the feature entirely
2. Ability to move the output so it doesn't pollute collections
3. To rename the frontmatter tag used

[sielay]

Hm. Alright. Just need bit more coffee. On it.

[sielay]

I updated #1255

1. Ability to disable the feature entirely - an easy one
2. Ability to move the output so it doesn't pollute collections - I'm not sure about this one. If I want to move the output of tags why I wouldn't use just addCollection? Actually, code is doing exactly that (which requires extra checks for --serve mode)
3. To rename the frontmatter tag used - done, more difficult, required loads of tests to be added

[sielay]

@zachleat @edwardhorsford @vwkd thoughts?