Jekyll post counts specific to custom front matter - tags

Question

I spent the last several hours scouring the depths of stackoverflow along with other amazing Jekyll tutorial sites, and have yet to find a solution to this particular issue. =[
Instead of using site.tags or site.categories, I created my own custom label named "subcategories" under the category 'blog'. The goal is to try to get a post-count for each. The tutorials I've found have worked for both categories AND tags perfectly, just not custom front matter.
Some of my subcategories are written like this:
[design]
[gaming]
[design, gaming]
I'm looking for a code that will increment the post count by 1 as it realizes there's a post that contains the subcategory. Since I am not using a plugin, the complete list of subcategories are actually listed separately in a data .yml file (in addition to start of my posts).
Here is one of my many pitiful attempts at writing this:
<ul class="blog__sidebar__subcategories m-t-s">
{% for subcategory in site.data.subcategories %}
<a class="blog__sidebar__subcategories__item" href="{{ site.baseurl }}/blog/{{ subcategory.class }}">
<li>{{ subcategory.class }}
{% assign counter = '0' %}
{% assign subcat_data == site.data.subcategories %}
{% for post in site.categories.blog %}
{% if subcat_data == post.subcategories %}
{% capture counter %}{{ counter | plus: '1' }}{% endcapture %}
{% endif %}
{% endfor %}
({{ counter }})
</li>
</a>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
Problems I've found include the output having constant duplicates, or spitting out "design,gaming" as one entity. This results in things like:
design | 6
gamingdesign | 6
gaming | 6
gaming | 6
Here's how my .yml file looks (simple):
- class: design
- class: gaming
And my code prior to attempting to add a post count (which worked!):
<ul class="blog__sidebar__subcategories m-t-s">
{% for subcategory in site.data.subcategories %}
<a class="blog__sidebar__subcategories__item" href="{{ site.baseurl }}/blog/{{ subcategory.class }}">
<li>{{ subcategory.class }}</li>
</a>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
Also please let me know if I accidentally violated any social etiquette of stackoverflow. First time posting! Thank you a million.

Answer 1

Jekyll is not playing well with user arrays. I think you'd better stick to Jekyll's existing mechanisms.
So, you can use tags for subcategories.
---
layout: post
date: 2014-08-14 07:51:24 +02:00
title: Your title
categories: [ blog ]
tags:
- design
- gaming
---
And your loop can be
{% for tag in site.tags %}
{% comment %}+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
tag = Array [
"design",
Array [
#Jekyll:Post #id="/blog/1993/02/08/index",
#Jekyll:Post #id="/blog/1991/08/14/index"
]
]
Values in this tag array are :
- tag[0] -> "design"
- tag[1] -> an Array of posts that have the design tag
Here, we can already do a "{{ tag [0] }} : {{ tag[1] | size }}"
that will give us the count for each tag's posts array.
But if one post insn't in "blog" category but has a tag used
in the "blog" category, it will be counted here.
Where must count only posts that are in the "blog" category.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++{% endcomment %}
{% assign counter = 0 %}
{% for post in tag[1] %}
{% if post.categories contains "blog" %}
{% assign counter = counter | plus: 1 %}
{% endif %}
{% endfor %}
{% comment %}+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Only print counter if the current tag has "blog" posts
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++{% endcomment %}
{% if counter > 0 %}
<p>{{ tag[0] }} : {{ counter }}</p>
{% endif %}
{% endfor %}