Blag (see xkcd://148) is yet another simple static page (blog in this case) generator.
Click here to read some posts by the famous bestseller writer, Markov Chain.
Command line used to generate it:
blag -baseurl="https://irth.pl/blagdemo/" -input=blagdemo-in -output=blagdemo -title="Blag demo." -disqus="blagdemo" -theme="$GOPATH/src/github.com/irth/blag/theme" -short=500 -pps=2
Because a simple static page generator isn't that hard to write, yet not easy enough to be boring to make. I wanted something to code, and this seemed like a nice idea. So, for fun. Like gopher Hacker News proxy (yep, Internet Gopher, that one with menus.) Maybe I'll write a blog. Just kidding. I don't have anything wise to say.
Install it:
go get github.com/irth/blag
then check out command line arguments (config is done only via cmdline args):
blag --help
| Argument name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| baseurl | "/" | Base URL of your website. It will be used in <base href="{{ baseurl }}">. |
| dateformat | "2006-01-02 15:04:05" | Format of date. See Golang docs. |
| disqus | "" | If you want to use Disqus comments, set this to your shortname. If you don't, leave it with the default value, which is an empty string. |
| "" | If you want to use Google Analytics, set this to your tracker ID. If you don't, leave it with the default value, which is an empty string. | |
| cookies | true | Show the EU cookie warning. You probably want this if you use analytics. |
| input | "input" | This is path to the directory where your blagposts are. They will be read in alphabetical order and appear on page in reverse alphabetical order. So, your post names should probably look similar to 01-firstpost.md or 2015-05-12_20:22_whatever.md. (.md extension is obligatory) |
| output | "output" | This is the directory where blag will store generated static HTML. It will be deleted recursively (using os.RemoveAll). So, be careful. |
| pps | 10 | Number of posts per page. Positive integer, please. |
| short | 250 | Length to which articles may be shortened when compact version is needed. |
| theme | "theme" | Directory containing the desired theme. Default simple theme probably exists in $GOPATH/src/github.com/irth/blag/theme. Feel free to use it. |
| title | "Blag." | Title of your blag. |
Store your posts in your input directory, with names ending with .md.
Post files should look like that:
title: "Post title"
timestamp: 112342151
slug: "this_will_be_in_article_url"
author: "John Doe"
markdownmarkdownmarkdown **MARKDOWN**
even more markdown
Top part is YAML. Bottom part is Markdown.
If you omit title or author, a dragon will come and burn your house.
If you omit timestamp, file modification date will be used.
If you omit slug, file name without extension will be used.
If you want to write your own theme, make a directory looking like that
your_directory/
|- static/
|- templates/
|- page.html
|- post.html
Files from static directory will be copied as they are to output directory.
Templates use pongo2 syntax, which should be compatible with Django's template syntax.
templates/page.html is template used to display multiple posts. First page will be also copied to index.html
Variables available in that template:
"disqus_shortname": *config.DisqusShortname, // --disqus cmdline argument value
"google_analytics_id": *config.GoogleAnalyticsID, // --google cmdline argument value
"base": *config.BaseURL, // --baseurl
"title": *config.Title, // --title
"posts": v, // slice (list) of posts.
// You can iterate over it.
"current_page": k, // Current page number.
// Do something cool with it, like "next/previous page" links.
"page_count": pageCount, // Count of all pages.
"shortlen": *config.StoryShortLength, // --short
templates/post.html is template used to generate single post page.
Variables:
"disqus_shortname": *config.DisqusShortname, // --disqus cmdline argument value
"google_analytics_id": *config.GoogleAnalyticsID, // --google cmdline argument value
"base": *config.BaseURL, // --baseurl
"title": *config.Title, // --title
"post": post, // post struct
Posts in post and posts look like that:
Title string
Timestamp int64
Time string // date and time formatted according to --dateformat
Author string
Slug string
Content string // html rendered from markdown
You can refer to them in templates using ., e.g. post.Title.
Definitely have a look at the template in this repo, it's pretty short when you don't count CSS, and you don't need to read it, and it allows you to see template inheritance, for loops, if statements, using those variables, etc.
Have fun.