This is Tickle 😂
Actual Truth (I think...):
I don't really know what a static site generator is (I'm actually not sure if that's true, but let's roll with it). Is this what it is, sort of?
I did this why, now?
I've used Jekyll a tiny, little, bit before and liked it a lot. But I didn't like not knowing what was going on underneath. I don't speak Ruby.
So it was either learn Ruby or write something in JavaScript (something about Ruby syntax bothers me -- I have no idea what or why). So I did some looking and reading and came across Marijn Haverbeke's heckle, a Jekyll clone written in JavaScript (Marijn Haverbeke is amazing).
✨ Jackpot! ✨
Tickle is heckle adapted (read: simplified) for my own needs. It's also not nearly ready for actual use. Happily welcoming contribs 😄
Basically, you point tickle to a directory of markdown files and a template for those files, and it renders ther markdown as html, spitting things out into a build folder. And it does it chuckling the entire time! 😆
Usage:
Currently, Tickle expects your project directory to contain the following:
_site
├── blog
│ └── posts
├── _includes
└── _templates
Posts will be generated based on the template specified in the post's frontmatter.
_includes
Partials can be placed in your _includes folder. Then, e.g. header.html, can be injected in your templates with {{>header}}.
/* _includes/header.html*/
<header>
<h1>Site Header 😆</h1>
</header>
/* _templates/default.html */
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
...
<body>
{{>header}}
...
</html>
blog/posts/
Posts should follow (what I take is fairly) standard naming convention:
yyyy-mm-dd-blogpost.(md|markdown|html)
Posts should begin with the following frontmatter:
---
title: "YourPostTitle"
template: "NameOfYourTemplate"
---
/* Begin post here */
_config.json
{
"site_url": "changethis.com",
"base_path": "./_site", <-- important
"output": "./public_html", <-- important
"clean_dist": true, <-- backs output up to old_output, deletes output
"build_index": true <-- creates postIndex.html ./public_html/blog/
}
Installation
Install with npm: npm install -D tickle-js-ssg
Then in your project root, you'd have a build file where you run:
'use strict';
const Tickle = require('tickle-js-ssg');
const config = require('path/to/your/_config.json')
// By default, Tickle looks for your a configuration file in your project root called `_config.json`.
function generate() {
Tickle(config);
};
generate(); // run generate() to :rocket:WIP:
📆 I'll be adding support for, among other things, ✓ partials and automatic generation of an index of posts, based on a given a template.