Filepress

Filepress is a minimal Rails plugin that syncs content from flat files to ActiveRecord models. Write your posts in Markdown, version control them with git, and query them with ActiveRecord.

gem "filepress"

Include a slug field to serve as the unique identifier (derived from the filename) and a body field for the content:

bin/rails generate model Post title:string slug:string:uniq body:text published:boolean
bin/rails db:migrate

class Post < ApplicationRecord
  filepress
end

Create a Markdown file at app/content/posts/hello-world.md. The filename becomes the slug, and YAML frontmatter maps to model attributes:

---
title: Hello World
published: true
---

This is my first post!

Filepress syncs your content to the database automatically — on boot, on deploy, and whenever files change in development.

# config/routes.rb
resources :posts, only: [:index, :show]

# app/controllers/posts_controller.rb
class PostsController < ApplicationController
  def index
    @posts = Post.all
  end

  def show
    @post = Post.find_by!(slug: params[:id])
  end
end

Override to_param so Rails generates URLs using the slug:

class Post < ApplicationRecord
  filepress

  def to_param
    slug
  end
end

<%# app/views/posts/index.html.erb %>
<% @posts.each do |post| %>
  <h2><%= link_to post.title, post %></h2>
<% end %>

<%# app/views/posts/show.html.erb %>
<h1><%= @post.title %></h1>
<%= @post.body.html_safe %>

Filepress stores the raw file content. To render Markdown to HTML at sync time, add a gem like Kramdown and a before_save callback:

gem "kramdown"
gem "kramdown-parser-gfm"

class Post < ApplicationRecord
  filepress

  before_save :render_body, if: :body_changed?

  def to_param
    slug
  end

  private

  def render_body
    self.body = Kramdown::Document.new(body, input: "GFM").to_html
  end
end

The body is converted once on sync, not on every request. Any Markdown library works — Redcarpet, CommonMarker, etc.

Filepress reads your content files, extracts YAML frontmatter, and uses the values to populate or update model attributes. The rest of the file becomes the body.

• Syncs are wrapped in a transaction — if any file fails, nothing changes
• Unknown frontmatter keys (that don't match a column) are silently ignored
• In development, Rails' built-in file watcher picks up live edits without a server restart

Customise Filepress by passing options to filepress:

filepress from: "app/my_custom_content_folder"

filepress extensions: ["html", "txt"]

filepress key: :name

filepress body: :content

By default, Filepress deletes records when the corresponding file is removed. Disable this with:

filepress destroy_stale: false