swanny
A static site generator that's easy to understand.
Developing a site
swanny transforms a directory of files into a directory of static files.
It transforms content by running each file through one of your extensions (depending on the extension in the filename) then optionally passes the result through one of your layouts to generate the final static output.
At development time swanny automatically applies changes to your web pages using livereload.js.
For example:
GET http://example.com/some/page
...corresponds to:
content/some/page.md
...which is rendered with:
extensions/md.js
..finally generating within a layout defined at:
layouts/default.js
Running the swanny server
You could install swanny globally:
npm i swanny -g
...and then run the server:
swanny server
...or publish the static files:
swanny publish
Adding swanny to your project
Usually you should swanny it to your project:
npm init
npm i swanny --save
Then register swanny as the start script in your package.json file:
"scripts": Now npm start will start the swanny server. You can leave it running, it'll
transform your content and refresh the static site when it notices changes to
your contents.
When you are ready to deploy then npm run publish will create a public
directory with your static files
Content
Content files live in your project's content directory. The extension of any
file in this directory should correspond to the name of a node module in your
extensions directory. This extension will be removed when the static file is
generated.
Extensions
An extension module transforms a file with that extension into an object, which can be either:
- Some content and a nominated layout for post-processing:
module layout: 'admin' content: 'Welcome to the dashboard'- or a response object with a content type and body:
module contentType: 'text/css' body: '* { color: red }'Layouts
A layout takes the result of calling the extension on the file, and transforms that into a response object:
module { return contentType: 'text/html' body: '<html><body>' + content + '</body></html>' }