How to read frontmatter of another page?

[undergroundwires]

I'm on page A.
I want to read frontmatter data on page B.
So it would be great to be able to read frontmatter for page given page Bs URL.

Options tried:
I'm using docs plugin.

useDocById does not return frontmatter data.
useDoc() returns only front matter for current page.

Options considered:

In docusaurus.config.ts, create markdown.parseFrontMatter to read frontmatters and store them to be able to reuse later.
However, that function has export type ParseFrontMatterParams = {filePath: string; fileContent: string}; signature, only revealing the filePath but not its URL.

How to read frontmatter of another page?

[slorber]

useDocById returns "global data" about a given doc.

This data structure is much smaller on purpose:

• inspect: https://docusaurus.io/__docusaurus/debug/globalData
• doc: https://docusaurus.io/docs/api/plugin-methods/lifecycle-apis#setGlobalData

We don't put front matter in global data, but:

• this issue discuss a possible feature to propagate it front matter in global data: Proposal: enable option to propagate arbitrary frontmatter data in globals #4492
• I just posted a demo on how to enhance an existing plugin to do so: Extend existing content plugins (CMS integration, middleware, doc gen...) #4138 (comment)

All this is not super convenient though. The real solution to make this convenient is to add React Server Components, my big 2025 project: #9089

---

In docusaurus.config.ts, create markdown.parseFrontMatter to read frontmatters and store them to be able to reuse later. However, that function has export type ParseFrontMatterParams = {filePath: string; fileContent: string}; signature, only revealing the filePath but not its URL.

I'm not sure to understand what you try to do.

parseFrontMatter will never receive the URL of the page, because the URL can be computed from the front matter. We have to read the front matter before we know the URL.

Now, if filePath === "a.md", you are free to do whatever you want with file "b.md".

[slorber]

---

Another possible solution would be to statically import page A front matter directly into page B:

# Tutorial Intro

import {frontMatter as PageAFrontMatter} from "./tutorial-basics/create-a-page.md"

{JSON.stringify(PageAFrontMatter,null,2)}

Demo: https://stackblitz.com/edit/github-qpvlpcea?file=README.md,docs%2Fintro.md,docs%2Ftutorial-basics%2Fcreate-a-page.md

This works if you are ok with static imports.

Now if you want to access by dynamically by URL, the only way is global data (and later React Server Components).