Configuring the Pagefind CLI

The Pagefind CLI has the following options:

For configuring the Pagefind search in the browser, see Pagefind Search Config. For configuring the Pagefind UI, see Pagefind UI.

#Required arguments

#Source

The location of your built static site.

CLI Flag	ENV Variable	Config Key
`--source <SOURCE>`	`PAGEFIND_SOURCE`	`source`

#Optional arguments

#Serve

Serve the source directory after creating the search index. Useful for testing search on a local build of your site without having to serve the source directory manually.

CLI Flag	ENV Variable	Config Key
`--serve`	`PAGEFIND_SERVE`	`serve`

#Bundle directory

The folder to output search files into, relative to source. Defaults to _pagefind.

CLI Flag	ENV Variable	Config Key
`--bundle-dir <DIR>`	`PAGEFIND_BUNDLE_DIR`	`bundle_dir`

#Root selector

The element that Pagefind should treat as the root of the document. Defaults to html.

Note that filters and metadata outside of this selector will not be detected, all Pagefind behaviour will be limited to this element and below. In most cases, you should use the data-pagefind-body attribute detailed in Customizing the index.

CLI Flag	ENV Variable	Config Key
`--root-selector <S>`	`PAGEFIND_ROOT_SELECTOR`	`root_selector`

#Exclude selectors

Pass extra element selectors that Pagefind should ignore when indexing. For example, in pagefind.yml:

exclude_selectors:
  - "#my_navigation"
  - "blockquote > span"
  - "[id^='prefix-']"

All children will also be ignored, so using a #my_navigation * selector is not required — in other words, the semantics are the same as the data-pagefind-ignore attribute.

Note that currently Pagefind only supports lists of options via configuration files. If using the --exclude-selectors CLI flag or the PAGEFIND_EXCLUDE_SELECTORS environment variable, only one selector may be supplied. The selector may be a comma-separated CSS selector though, so the above example can be passed as --exclude-selectors "#my_navigation, blockquote > span, [id^='prefix-']".

CLI Flag	ENV Variable	Config Key
`--exclude-selectors <S>`	`PAGEFIND_EXCLUDE_SELECTORS`	`exclude_selectors`

#Glob

Configures the glob used by Pagefind to discover HTML files. Defaults to **/*.{html}.

CLI Flag	ENV Variable	Config Key
`--glob <GLOB>`	`PAGEFIND_GLOB`	`glob`

#Force Language

Ignores any detected languages and creates a single index for the entire site as the provided language. Expects an ISO 639-1 code, such as en or pt.

See Multilingual search for more details.

CLI Flag	ENV Variable	Config Key
`--force-language <LANG>`	`PAGEFIND_FORCE_LANGUAGE`	`force_language`

#Keep Index URL

Keeps index.html at the end of search result paths. By default, a file at animals/cat/index.html will be given the URL /animals/cat/. Setting this option to true will result in the URL /animals/cat/index.html.

CLI Flag	ENV Variable	Config Key
`--keep-index-url`	`KEEP_INDEX_URL`	`keep_index_url`

#Verbose

Prints extra logging while indexing the site. Only affects the CLI, does not impact web-facing search.

CLI Flag	ENV Variable	Config Key
`--verbose`	`PAGEFIND_VERBOSE`	`verbose`