Clean URLs (output directory structure change)

[shreyasminocha]

I'm interested in clean URLs for pages:

File: src/foo/bar.md
Expected path: /foo/bar
Actual path: /foo/bar.html

It's mostly a stylistic preference.

I'm transitioning from GitBook and this is one of the few small things I'm having trouble with. Thanks!

Related: #1238

[nihaals]

I think you're meant to use README.md to index.html, although that feels like an annoying workaround, and I agree that it would be nice to be able to choose between bar.md → bar.html and bar.md → bar/index.html.

[shreyasminocha]

While I could create src/foo/bar/readme.md and access it at /foo/bar, it would be a lot more convenient if src/foo/bar.md were accessible at /foo/bar.

[shreyasminocha]

Here's a more detailed explanation of what I'm proposing:

Source

src
├── SUMMARY.md
├── foo
│   ├── alpha.md
│   ├── beta.md
│   └── readme.md
├── bar
│   ├── delta.md
│   ├── gamma.md
│   └── readme.md
└── readme.md

Current behaviour

book
├── foo
│   ├── alpha.html
│   ├── beta.html
│   └── index.html
├── bar
│   ├── delta.html
│   ├── gamma.html
│   └── index.html
└── index.html

Proposed behaviour

book
├── foo
│   ├── alpha
│   │   └── index.html
│   ├── beta
│   │   └── index.html
│   └── index.html
├── bar
│   ├── delta
│   │   └── index.html
│   ├── gamma
│   │   └── index.html
│   └── index.html
└── index.html

---

This proposal is in line with the way hugo, eleventy, and AFAIK even jekyll work.

I suppose this could also take the form of an optional preprocessor which would create a directory for every non-index .md file and move the .md into the directory as index.md or readme.md.

[sjkim04]

I agree with this. While there are permalink options in most webpage renderers, mdBook does not. I will open another issue for this.