Getting Started

Read a complete document, access its metadata, and slice the remaining body from the original source.

<?php
use Alto\FrontMatter\FrontMatter;

$document = <<<'MARKDOWN'
---
title: Hello World
draft: false
weight: 3
tags: [php, alto]
author:
  name: Jane
---
# Hello World
MARKDOWN;

$metadata = FrontMatter::fromString($document);

$title = $metadata->getString('title');
$draft = $metadata->getBoolean('draft', false);
$author = $metadata->all('author');

$body = substr(
    $document,
    $metadata->sourceOffset() + $metadata->sourceLength(),
);

fromString() takes document contents, not a path. It decodes eagerly and returns an empty Metadata object when no front matter block is present.

Use fromFile() when the package should read a file:

<?php
$metadata = FrontMatter::fromFile('content/article.md');

The body is deliberately not stored in Metadata. Keeping the original input under application control avoids a second copy of large documents and lets the caller decide whether the body should be sliced, streamed, or ignored.

Read Typed Metadata for every accessor and Decoding for the accepted syntax.