Collections

Collections are Dune's way of gathering and displaying groups of pages. They're defined in frontmatter — no code, no database queries, no GraphQL.

Basic example: blog listing

---
title: "Blog"
collection:
  items:
    "@self.children": true
  order:
    by: date
    dir: desc
---

This gathers all child pages of the current page, sorted by date (newest first). The theme's blog.tsx template receives these pages and renders the listing.

Collection sources

The items field determines WHERE to pull pages from:

Self-relative sources

Source	Description
`@self.children`	Direct children of this page
`@self.siblings`	Pages at the same level
`@self.modules`	Modular sections (`_name/` children)
`@self.descendants`	All nested pages at any depth

Path-based sources

Source	Description
`@page.children: "/blog"`	Children of a specific page
`@page.descendants: "/docs"`	All descendants of a specific page

Taxonomy-based sources

Source	Description
`@taxonomy.tag: "deno"`	All pages tagged "deno"
`@taxonomy.category: ["tutorials", "guides"]`	Pages in either category
`@taxonomy: { tag: "deno", category: "tutorials" }`	Pages matching ALL criteria

Ordering

collection:
  items:
    "@self.children": true
  order:
    by: date       # "date", "title", "order", "random", or "custom.field"
    dir: desc      # "asc" or "desc"

Order by	Sorts on
`date`	Frontmatter `date` field
`title`	Frontmatter `title` (alphabetical)
`order`	Folder numeric prefix (`01.`, `02.`, ...)
`random`	Randomized on each request
`custom.fieldname`	Any field in frontmatter `custom`

Filtering

Narrow results with filters:

collection:
  items:
    "@self.descendants": true
  filter:
    published: true
    template: post
    taxonomy:
      tag: deno

Filter	Effect
`published: true`	Only published pages (default behavior)
`visible: true`	Only visible pages
`routable: true`	Only routable pages
`template: "post"`	Only pages using the `post` template
`template: ["post", "article"]`	Pages using either template
`taxonomy: { tag: "deno" }`	Pages with specific taxonomy values

Pagination

collection:
  items:
    "@self.children": true
  order:
    by: date
    dir: desc
  pagination:
    size: 10

With pagination enabled, the collection provides page navigation data:

collection.page — current page number
collection.pages — total number of pages
collection.hasNext / collection.hasPrev — navigation booleans

The URL automatically gains a /page:2, /page:3 suffix.

Limit and offset

For simple truncation without full pagination:

collection:
  items:
    "@self.children": true
  order:
    by: date
    dir: desc
  limit: 5         # show only 5 items
  offset: 0        # skip N items from the start

Combining everything

A real-world example — a "Related posts" section:

---
title: "Advanced Deno Patterns"
taxonomy:
  tag: [deno, patterns, advanced]
  category: [tutorials]
collection:
  items:
    "@taxonomy.tag": "deno"
  filter:
    published: true
    template: post
  order:
    by: date
    dir: desc
  limit: 5
---

This pulls up to 5 published blog posts tagged "deno", sorted newest first. The current page is automatically excluded from its own collection results.