Data fetching

Content collections are loaded from disk (glob) or from a loader function, which can fetch remote/derived data at build time.

#Python loader

Pass loader= to define_collection. The function returns an iterable of {"id", "data", "body"} dicts:

  

    
        
    
    
    
        
            
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def fetch_authors():    resp = requests.get("https://api.example.com/authors").json()    return [{"id": a["id"], "data": a} for a in resp]authors = define_collection("authors", loader=fetch_authors, schema=Author)

The loader may be async (epresso awaits it). Entries are validated against the schema and get a content digest for incremental builds.

#Remote data

Loaders run at build time, so you can pull from any HTTP API, database, or service — the data is fetched once and baked into the static site.

#Environment-aware

Loaders/plugins see environment variables via os.environ and the per-env dotenv files — see [Environment variables](../build/environment-variables.md.

#See also

• [Content collections](content-collections.md — the collection model