@jlpenny/staticton v0.0.7
StatiCTON
A javascript static site generator
What is it?
StatiCTON is an easy to use static site generator, similar to Jekyll. Coming in at under 300 lines of code, it's surpringly powerful.
How to use
First steps: objects.yml file
The configuration format is stored in a file called objects.yml in the build directory. The only really 'required' variable is base, which is the directory to output to.
From the command line
You can simply run it from the commandline directly using node ./index.js -d [build_dir], if build_dir is not specified, it will just take the current directory.
As a library
If you want, you can include StatiCTON as such:
var staticton = require('staticton');
var test = new staticton('./build_path');
test.all();
This will build the build path.
Using staticton as a library - continued
By default, the staticton library will write out to the specified base directory. However, you can also simply not have it write to a directory, by specifying 'false' as the first parameter of .all. For example:
test.all(false);
This tells staticton not to build to files, but instead write to a variable called 'output' in the class. Output is an object containing all of the rendered pages, the index being the page's relative URL. For instance:
test.output['/index.html']
So simple! This way, you can serve your data right from memory however you want, and even rebuild it on the fly by calling all again. This is useful if you have a frontend site which consits of mixed static and dynamic pages, or if you simply want to serve it straight out of the RAM.
Templating engine
Templates have a simple format.
{{ variable }} displays a variable
{% statement %} performs a statement.
Example statements
{% for x in/of y %} same as JS for ( let x in/of y )
{% foreach x as v, i %} same as JS x.forEach(v, i)
{% end/endfor/endif %} is simply replaced with a finishing curly bracket
{% endforeach %} closes a foreach statement
{% if x == y %} if(x == y), you also have {% else %} and {% elseif x == y %}
API
The renderer class has a member called globals which contains variables which are accessible within templates. You can define your own, too. Built in ones includes:
route(url)
This generates a full URL for the relative url.
where(pages, statement).pages
This queries a pages object with the callback 'statement,' which is passed to Array.filter. This actually returns a 'query' class on which you can perform further sort or where transformations, then .pages contains the current list of available pages.
sort(pages, statement).pages
The same as where but passes the statement to Array.sort.
Example repository
To be honest, there is much more to it than this. But until I write a proper documentation for the site templating system itself, I invite you to head over to the repo of my personal site's source to review how you could set up a build directory.