Compile Templates Embedded in Markdown Files

[sghoweri]

You know the thing that really sucks about documenting your growing design system? When your docs you spent so much time putting together get out of sync with your source of truth. Again.

Wouldn't it be amazing if we could just use the same data and the same templates being put INTO the system to DOCUMENT the system itself? What's that? I already put a PR in for that on the original Pattern Lab PHP Core repo... 10 months ago? Oh snap!

In all seriousness, this is a major feature we've been seriously lacking in Pattern Lab's markdown docs approach for forever. This PR should fix that by letting you use the same templates and same data as you would with any other pattern in Pattern Lab, but in your markdown files.

Testing this out locally seems to be working as expected (global data trickling through, local data overriding global data if it exists, and pattern includes w/ namespaces) -- all seem to be working perfectly at first glance!

Before:

After:

Practical Usage Example:

CC @EvanLovely @evanmwillhite @jesconstantine @aleksip @bradfrost

[EvanLovely]

Tested this out and it works for me too. Nice work! Yeah, there's a lot of cool ways this could get used....

@sghoweri Go ahead and merge and release a new version as is if you'd like! Not sure if you want to refine further or not.

This also led me to think about how we document what our forks can do that the original Pattern Lab cannot so people know about these cool features to use. I'm not sure what's the best place. I initially think about the wiki attached to each repo, but that leads to having multiple ones spread about, but it'd work cleanly. Perhaps it'd just be a single wiki page with all the fixes and improvements we have.

[sghoweri]

@sghoweri Go ahead and merge and release a new version as is if you'd like! Not sure if you want to refine further or not.

@EvanLovely I might sit on this for a day or two but definitely (or not... lemme think about it). Just want to make sure we have a little PR and docs written up before cutting a new release for this.

This also led me to think about how we document what our forks can do that the original Pattern Lab cannot so people know about these cool features to use. I'm not sure what's the best place. I initially think about the wiki attached to each repo, but that leads to having multiple ones spread about, but it'd work cleanly. Perhaps it'd just be a single wiki page with all the fixes and improvements we have

+1 for having a single wiki (or single wiki with different sections) highlighting the key differences in features we've put in, configuration, differences between this and PL Node project, etc.

The Pattern Lab Node project does have quite a well put together wiki I must say:

• https://github.com/pattern-lab/patternlab-node/wiki/Known-Issues-&-Deviations-from-Pattern-Lab-PHP
• https://github.com/pattern-lab/patternlab-node/wiki/Configuration
• https://github.com/pattern-lab/patternlab-node/wiki/ChangeLog

[bradfrost]

Hey @sghoweri and @EvanLovely, just letting you know this all looks awesome. I'm ducking in here really just to say that these features are great and we're looking at how to best wrangle documentation and feature requests. As for the lack of attention on the PRs, we're starting to try to address that as well.

Keep all this great thinking up and I'm hoping we can get this great stuff closer to core soon.

[sghoweri]

Moving this PR over to the main PR repo! pattern-lab#126