quarto-render-sync

Quarto Render-and-Sync Workflow

This skill sets up a Quarto project with a post-render hook that automatically renames the rendered output and copies it to a network folder (e.g., Egnyte mapped drive).

Architecture

Three files work together:

1. _quarto.yml — Declares the post-render hook
2. post_render.R — Runs automatically after render; renames output and copies to network
3. The .qmd file — Contains params$output_path specifying the network destination

Reference Implementations

If you have access to the RRC repos, see:

• <your-repos>/primers/quarto_markdown_word — original Word/.docx version
• <your-repos>/sem_yr5_2026/00_template_scripts — HTML version

_quarto.yml

project:
  type: default
  post-render:
    - "Rscript post_render.R"

.qmd YAML params

The .qmd file must include output_path in its YAML params block:

params:
  output_path: "Z:/Shared/RRC/M/DATA/SEM/SEM (YR5) 2026/field_tracking"

post_render.R pattern

The post-render script follows this structure:

1. Find the rendered output — Check QUARTO_PROJECT_OUTPUT_FILES env var (set by Quarto), fall back to scanning .qmd files for declared output
2. Parse YAML from the source .qmd — Use yaml::yaml.load() on the front matter to get params$output_path
3. Optionally rename — If the output should have a different name (e.g., match a dataset filename), copy the file rather than rename it. Quarto checks for the original output file after post-render and will error if it's been renamed/moved.
4. Copy to network — Use file.copy() with overwrite = TRUE, or RrcUtils::sync_to_egnyte() if available. Wrap in tryCatch so a network failure doesn't crash the render.

Key gotcha: copy, don't rename

When renaming output in post-render, always use file.copy() instead of file.rename(). Quarto verifies its expected output file still exists after post-render completes. If the original file is gone, Quarto reports:

ERROR: No output created by quarto render

The original file can be gitignored.

.gitignore patterns

*_files/
00_template_scripts/*.html

Packages used

• yaml — Parse YAML front matter from .qmd files
• quarto — quarto::quarto_render() if rendering from R (optional; user can also render from IDE)
• RrcUtils — sync_to_egnyte(from, to, overwrite, verbose) for network drive copies (optional; file.copy() works too)

Workflow for the analyst

1. Open the .qmd and update the parameters (park name, data file path, output_path, etc.)
2. Render normally (Ctrl+Shift+K in Positron/RStudio, or quarto render from terminal)
3. Post-render hook runs automatically — renames and copies to network folder