Unlike other static site generators written in other languages, Hugo doesn't offer any way to extend its features with plugins. To overcome this limitation DatoCMS offers a Javascript-based CLI tool that makes it extremely convenient to transform the content stored in your administrative area into local:

• Hugo posts and content types (complete with Yaml frontmatter);

• Hugo data files;

• Add sections to your Hugo configuration file.

Once content coming from DatoCMS is dumped into local files, you are free to use Hugo just like you're used to. You are in charge of specifying how DatoCMS records will be dumped into these files using a Javascript config file called dato.config.js.

Disclaimer: This guide assumes you already know what Hugo is and how it works. If you need some help getting started with Hugo, you can read the official Hugo documentation and discussion forum.

Installation

Assuming you have a working NodeJS environment on your machine, you can install the datocms-client NodeJS package running these commands inside your Hugo project:

$ npm init
$ npm install datocms-client --save-dev

The npm package exposes a CLI tool: if everything worked correctly, you should now run it and see the help banner:

$ ./node_modules/.bin/dato
Usage:
  dato dump [--watch] [--verbose] [--token=<apiToken>] [--config=<file>]
  dato migrate-slugs [--token=<apiToken>] [--skip-id-prefix]
  dato check
  dato -h | --help
  dato --version

The main command the dato CLI tool exposes is dump, which is the one you're going to use to fetch the records from our API and transform them into local files.

You can invoke the command like this:

$ ./node_modules/.bin/dato dump --token=READONLY_API_TOKEN

You can find your API token in the Admin area > API tokens section:

Passing the API token as environment variable

Instead of specifying the API token as a parameter, you can pass it as an environment variable:

$ export DATO_API_TOKEN=abc123
$ ./node_modules/.bin/dato dump

The CLI tool also loads environment variables from a .env file, so you can place the token there and forget about it (just make sure not to publish your .env file on Github):

$ echo '.env' >> .gitignore
$ echo 'DATO_API_TOKEN=abc123' >> .env
$ ./node_modules/.bin/dato dump

Published vs latest versions

If you are working on development/staging environment, you might want to preview the latest version of records instead of the published one. In this case, you can add a --preview flag:

$ ./node_modules/.bin/dato dump --preview

Reading from a sandbox environment

To explicitely read data from a specific environment and not from the primary one you can use the --environment flag:

$ ./node_modules/.bin/dato dump --environment=my-sandbox-environment

The config file

The dump command will read a file dato.config.js (or the file passed by the --config option). This file should export a function that instructs how to transform the content stored remotely on DatoCMS into local files.

Let's watch a simple example to get started:

// dato.config.js
module.exports = (dato, root, i18n) => {
  const content = { hello: "world" }
  root.createDataFile("data/foobar.yml", 'yaml', content)
}

Now run dato dump:

$ ./node_modules/.bin/dato dump
✔ Fetching content from DatoCMS...
* Written data/foobar.yml

Great! In this example, root.createDataFile() is a method made available to you that can generate YAML/TOML/JSON files. It's perfect to generate Hugo data files.

You can also generate Hugo posts and types with the root.createPost() method:

// dato.config.js
module.exports = (dato, root, i18n) => {
  root.createPost("content/post/my-post.md", "yaml", {
    frontmatter: {
      title: "First article",
      type: "post",
      categories: ["random"],
      weight: 4,
      date: "2012-04-06",
    },
    content: "Lorem **ipsum dolor sit amet**, consectetur adipiscing elit."
  });
}

If you need to place a collection of posts within a folder, you can use the root.directory method, so that every time the dump command is executed, previous content of the directory will be erased:

// dato.config.js
module.exports = (dato, root, i18n) => {
  root.directory("content/post", (dir) => {
    for (let i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
      dir.createPost(`post-${i}.md`, "yaml", {
        frontmatter: {
          title: `Article ${i}`,
          type: "post",
          categories: ["random"],
          weight: 4,
          date: "2012-04-06",
        },
        content: "Lorem **ipsum dolor sit amet**, consectetur adipiscing elit."
      });
    }
  });
}

Now that you know how you can create local files, the final step is to start generating them with data coming from DatoCMS. An object called dato is available exactly for this purpose:

// dato.config.js
module.exports = (dato, root, i18n) => {
  // inside a "post" directory...
  root.directory("content/post", (dir) => {
    // ...iterate over the "Blog post" records...
    dato.blogPosts.forEach((blogPost) => {
      // ...and create a markdown file for each article!
      dir.createPost(`${blogPost.slug}.md`, "yaml", {
        frontmatter: {
          title: blogPost.title,
          type: "post",
          categories: blogPost.categories.map(cat => cat.slug),
          date: blogPost.publishedAt,
        },
        content: blogPost.content
      });
    }
  });
}

Once your dato.config.js is ready, just run the dato dump command: you should see your Hugo project populated with content. Run hugo -w and enjoy!

Obviously, that's just a quick tour: you can learn all the details about how to access your records inside your config file in the following sections.