Cant get xref to image to work with markdown

[codeulike]

I've just got a vanilla setup with Statiq.web and the cleanblog theme

I'm trying to add an image to a blogpost using xref:

![alt text](xref:myimagefilename.png)

This doesn't seem to work, the xref does not get translated. It comes through as:

<img src="xref:myimagefilename.png" alt="alt text">

Is there some way to peek into the xref collection and see whats in there?

Or is this happening because xref only applies to content files and not to assets? - in which case whats the best way to stick an image into a markdown blog post?

[daveaglick]

Or is this happening because xref only applies to content files and not to assets?

That's exactly it. The idea behind xrefs is that it's a way for the generator to build a dictionary of pages keyed by a simple ID (the xref, which is normally constructed from the page title, but can also be customized per-page in front-matter). That way when a page moves around to a different path, the pages linking to it don't have to do anything to be generated with the new URL. They're really handy in content heavy sites with lots of cross-references to ensure you don't have to go around and change 100 other pages with inbound links every time you move a page.

Images in Markdown are fairly straightforward and don't require special xref handling at all. Assume you've put an image abc.png in your site at /input/assets/abc.png. The Markdown to include that on a page would be ![alt text](/assets/abc.png "image title"). It can also be relative, so if the image is in the same folder as the Markdown file you can just write ![alt text](abc.png "image title").