Lua Environment Extension For Quarto

lua-env is an extension for Quarto to provide access to LUA objects as metadata.

Installing

quarto add mcanouil/quarto-lua-env

This will install the extension under the _extensions subdirectory. If you're using version control, you will want to check in this directory.

Using

Add the following to your YAML header:

filters:
  - lua-env

This will give you access to the quarto and several Pandoc LUA internal objects using any of the below shortcodes:

{{< lua-env quarto.doc.input_file >}}

{{< meta lua-env.quarto.doc.input_file >}}

LUA objects currently available as metadata:

lua-env:
  quarto: "quarto"
  pandoc:
    PANDOC_STATE: "PANDOC_STATE"
    FORMAT: "FORMAT"
    PANDOC_READER_OPTIONS: "PANDOC_READER_OPTIONS"
    PANDOC_WRITER_OPTIONS: "PANDOC_WRITER_OPTIONS"
    PANDOC_VERSION: "PANDOC_VERSION"
    PANDOC_API_VERSION: "PANDOC_API_VERSION"
    PANDOC_SCRIPT_FILE: "PANDOC_SCRIPT_FILE"

See Pandoc LUA API - Global Variables for more information about Pandoc global variables.

JSON Export

You can export the lua-env metadata to a JSON file by configuring the json option.

By default, no JSON file is written (json: false).

To enable JSON export with the default filename:

filters:
  - lua-env
extensions:
  lua-env:
    json: true  # Exports to "lua-env.json"

To specify a custom file path:

filters:
  - lua-env
extensions:
  lua-env:
    json: "custom-path.json"  # Exports to "custom-path.json"

The JSON file will contain all the LUA environment metadata collected during document rendering.

Example

Here is the source code for a minimal example: example.qmd.