How to pass variables to pandoc for use in HTML template?

Question

I use pandoc in VSCode to generate HTML files from Markdown files.

I use the following htmlOptString in VSCode:

"pandoc.htmlOptString": "-s -f gfm -t html5 --template=pandoc-template.html"

I don't want to have to change that line every time I render a document.

I do not understand how I can use metadata to pass information like author, title or more, from the MD file.

For example the following does not create the $title$ variable:

---
title: test
...

In my template the title element id rendered as empty

<title>$title$</title>

How do I create variables from the markdown file?

I also tried using a YAML metadata file to no effect.

UPDATE

Environment

• MacOS Sierra
• Pandoc 2.1.1
• Latest VSCode

I tried specifying the yaml_metadata_block extension in the pandoc command My new htmlOptString is:

"pandoc.htmlOptString": "-s --from=gfm+yaml_metadata_block -t html5 --template=pandoc-template.html"

When I run the command from a terminal the result is the same, i.e. the title block is rendered in HTML and no $title$ variable is generated.

Answer 1

Pandoc added support for this in version 2.13 (released on 2021-03-21). Nowadays, it should be enough to update to the latest version for this to work.