the long and the shortcodes of it

I've just spent a little time trying to learn how to use Nikola's "shortcodes", and I've learned enough delicate things that I want to write them down for later. Not least, there are descriptions of the shortcode syntax on two different very long and identically-formatted pages, the Nikola handbook and the guide to extending Nikola.

There's also some overlap between the Markdown-supported shortcodes versus a set of reStructuredText extensions.

Built-in shortcodes

The short version is that there are some magic words that you can include in a Markdown content file, using something like Jinja's template syntax, which do programmy things. One is raw, which doesn't seem to be able to display itself because of some recursion thing. But in general,

{{% name parameters %}}

makes things happen. There are a number of built-in shortcodes, whose examples in the manual I won't duplicate, but I'll list them here:

• chart

  This actually draws a graph in the page, which would be a fun thing to play with later.

• doc

  This seems to be the correct way to do internal linking, using the stub names. For example, My previous post was improbable units.

• emoji

  😢

• listing

  p-exam/poisson.py (Source)

  	# within ipython --pylab
  	from scipy.special import factorial
  	top = 5
  	def p(x, mean):
  	return exp(-mean)*mean**x / factorial(x)
  	x, mean = meshgrid( arange(2*top+1), linspace(0.5,top,12) )
  	pp = p(x,mean)
  	gcf().clear()
  	plot(x.T,pp.T, alpha=0.5, marker='.');
  	legend([f"mean={m:.2f}" for m in unique(mean)]);
  	xlabel('x') ; ylabel('P(x)');

• media

  It doesn't seem to work magically for embedding a local video file.

• thumbnail

  I haven't messed with images, but I think there's some magic thumbnailing happening. Perhaps this is how I'll use it.

• template

  This lets you put jinja template code right in the document.

  • The square of 6 is 36
  • The square of 7 is 49
  • The square of 8 is 64
  • The square of 9 is 81

Custom template shortcodes

A template file named shortcodes/mycode.tmpl will be executed when the source text contains

{{% foo bar=bla baz bux  %}}

Here's a little template that implements foo:

shortcodes/foo.tmpl (Source)

    This fragment should appear in the text.
    <ul>
    {% for number in range(6,10) %}
    <li>The square root of {{number}}
        is {{ '{:0.3f}'.format(number**0.5) }}</li>
    {% endfor %}
    </ul>

And here's what it does:

This fragment should appear in the text.

• The square root of 6 is 2.449
• The square root of 7 is 2.646
• The square root of 8 is 2.828
• The square root of 9 is 3.000

Exploration by introspection

shortcodes/introspection.tmpl (Source)

This template prints some information about the <code>post</code> object.

<table style="font-family: monospace; font-size: xx-small;">
  <tr>
    <th> key </th>
    <th> type </th>
    <th> size </th>
  </tr>
  {% for key in post.__dict__  %}
    <tr>
      <td>{{ key }}</td>
      <td>{{ post[key].__class__.__name__ }}</td>
      {% if post[key].__class__ == post['compile_html'].__class__ %}
        <td> callable method </td>
      {% elif post[key].__class__ == post['messages'].__class__ %}
        <td> [something complicated] </td>
      {% elif post[key].__class__ in (dict, list, tuple) %}
        <td>{{ post[key] | length }}</td>
      {% else %}
        <td>{{ post[key] }}</td>
      {% endif %}
    </tr>
  {% endfor %}
</table>

This template prints some information about the post object.

key	type	size
config	dict	204
current_time	datetime	2026-01-04 14:53:59.901412-06:00
base_url	str	https://mahurin.us/robtasm/
strip_indexes	bool	True
index_file	str	index.html
pretty_urls	bool	True
default_lang	str	en
translations	dict	1
skip_untranslated	bool	False
_default_preview_image	NoneType	None
types_to_hide_title	list	[]
source_path	str	posts/2025/07/03/the-long-and-the-shortcodes-of-it.md
post_name	str	posts/2025/07/03/the-long-and-the-shortcodes-of-it
base_path	str	cache/posts/2025/07/03/the-long-and-the-shortcodes-of-it.html
_base_path	str	cache/posts/2025/07/03/the-long-and-the-shortcodes-of-it.html
metadata_path	str	posts/2025/07/03/the-long-and-the-shortcodes-of-it.meta
compiler	CompileMarkdown
is_post	bool	True
messages	Functionary	[something complicated]
_template_name	str	post.tmpl
compile_html	method	callable method
demote_headers	int	1
_dependency_file_fragment	defaultdict	defaultdict(, {'en': [(True, .create_lambda.. at 0x7f3291fcbec0>)], None: []})
_dependency_file_page	defaultdict	defaultdict(, {'en': [], None: []})
_dependency_uptodate_fragment	defaultdict	defaultdict(, {'en': [], None: []})
_dependency_uptodate_page	defaultdict	defaultdict(, {'en': [], None: []})
_depfile	defaultdict	defaultdict(, {})
metadata_extractors_by	dict	4
translated_to	set	{'en'}
folder_relative	str	2025/07/03
folder_base	TranslatableSetting	posts
folders	dict	1
folder	str	posts/2025/07/03
_is_two_file	bool	False
meta	Functionary	[something complicated]
used_extractor	Functionary	[something complicated]
date	datetime	2025-07-03 17:03:10-05:00
updated	datetime	2025-07-03 17:03:10-05:00
data	Functionary	[something complicated]
category_from_destpath	bool	False
_tags	dict	1
publish_later	bool	False
use_in_feeds	bool	True
url_type	NoneType	None
_next_post	Post
_prev_post	Post

Now that I know how to poke around on the inside of these things, I am much more likely to be able to figure out how they work.