# snkt
`snkt` is a static web site generator focused on simplicity and efficiency.
snkt only does a few things, but strives to do them well, in a coherent manner.
snkt generates my [personal web site of ~2000 articles in under a second](https://trenchant.org/daily/2017/1/31/). Additional work may be done to increase efficiency, but it should be fast enough to regularly regenerate your site without concern in near real-time if needed.
## What
Takes a bunch of plain text files, processes them via templates, and generates HTML. Pretty much like you'd expect of a static site generator.
## Why
Every 5-10 years I throw out the software for my site and rewrite it.
This time it's in Go. Maybe you'll find it useful.
I found it fun to get myself thinking in Go. Also, it's 10x faster than the old version in Python.
## Status
It powers [trenchant.org](https://trenchant.org) but is under active development and pieces may change. See TODO for future / in progress work.
## Getting snkt
[Install Go](https://golang.org/doc/install)
Set up $GOPATH
$ mkdir $HOME/go
$ export GOPATH=$HOME/go
See also: [The GOPATH environment variable](https://golang.org/doc/code.html#GOPATH)
Add $GOPATH/bin to your PATH
$ export PATH=$PATH:$GOPATH/bin
Download and build `snkt`
$ go get adammathes.com/snkt
This should download depdendencies, build `snkt` and place it in $GOPATH/bin
`snkt` should now be a self-contained binary, you can move it if needed.
## Setting up a site
Use the "-init" option to create the skeleton for a new site -
$ snkt -init blogadu
This will create:
* `txt` directory for plain text input
* `html` directory for HTML output
* `tmpl` directory for templates
* `base` basic HTML structure for all pages
* `post` single post page template
* `home` - home page with recent posts template
* `archive` - list all posts template
* `rss` - template for an RSS 2.0 archive
* `config.yml` -- configuration file
## First Post
A one line plaint text file is a valid post.
user@host:~/blogadu$ echo "hello world" >> txt/hi
Build the site
$ snkt -b
Output should now be in the `html` directory and look like
* `html`
* `hi/index.html` hello world post
* `index.html`
* `archive.html`
* `rss.xml`
Run a preview server to see the results with
$ snkt -p
Loading http://localhost:8000 in a web browser should now show the (near empty) site.
## Command Line Usage
```
Usage of snkt:
-b build site
-c configuration
configuration file (default "config.yml")
-h help
-init directory
initialize new site at directory
-p preview site with local HTTP server
-v print version number
-verbose
log actions during build
```
## Configuration File
The configuration is in [YAML](http://yaml.org)
For most purposes, it should just be a listing of attribute : value
Configuration options --
| name | value | default |
|------------------|--------------------------------------------------|----------------|
| `input_dir` | absolute path of directory for text input files | |
| `output_dir` | absolute path of directory for html output files | |
| `tmpl_dir` | absolute path of directory for template files | |
| `site_title` | string for the site's title (used in templates) | |
| `site_url` | absolute URL for the site (used in templates) | |
| `filters` | list of search/replace regex's to run on posts | |
| `permalink_fmt` | format string for permalinks | /%F/ |
| `post_file_fmt` | format string for post filenames | /%F/index.html |
| `show_future` | include posts with dates in the future | false |
| `preview_server` | host:port to spawn the preview server | localhost:8000 |
| `preview_dir` | root directory of preview server | `output_dir` |
## Posts
Post inputs are stored as plain text files. (I have only tested UTF-8 and ASCII.)
Posts have an optional metadata preamble, and a markdown formatted body. The preamble is just a series of name value pairings separated by a colon (:) character.
Minimal complete and valid post --
this is a totally valid post
Post with a preamble --
title: also a valid post
date: 2017-02-08
valid: totes
This post will have an explicitly set title (ooh! fancy!)
instead of inferred from the filename.
It will also have an explicitly set date instead of inferring
it from the file creation/modification time.
`totes` will be stored in the post's `meta` map under `valid.`
You don't have to worry about that right now. Honest.
## Templates
Templates use the standard library [Go text/template](https://golang.org/pkg/text/template/).
### Types
#### Site (see site/site.go)
```go
Title string
URL string
Posts post.Posts
```
#### Post (see post/post.go)
```go
// Metadata
Meta map[string]string
SourceFile string
Title string `json:"title"`
Permalink string `json:"permalink"`
Time time.Time
Year int
Month time.Month
Day int
InFuture bool
// Content text -- raw, unprocessed, unfiltered markdown
Text string
// Content text -- processed into HTML via markdown and other filters
Content string
// Content with sources and references resolved to absolute URLs
AbsoluteContent string
// Post following chronologically (later)
Next *Post
// Post preceding chronologically (earlier)
Prev *Post
// Precomputed dates as strings
Date string
RssDate string
FileInfo os.FileInfo
Site sitemeta
```
### home
Displays recent posts. Rendered to `index.html`.
- {{.Site}} *Site*
- {{.Posts}} *Posts* all posts on site, reverse chronological order
### post
Template that gets rendered to create individual post pages
- {{.Site}} *Site*
- {{.Post}} *Post* the individual post the page is for
### archive
Lists all posts, showing only titles and links. Rendered to `archive.html`
- {{.Site}} *Site*
- {{.Posts}} *Posts* all posts, reverse chronological order
### rss
Displays recent posts as RSS 2.0 XML. Rendered to `rss.xml`
- {{.Site}} *Site*
- {{.Posts}} *Posts* all posts, reverse chronological order
## Advanced Features
### paged template
If present renders paged archives (15 posts per page) to `page/%d.html`
See archive/paged.go for details. Used to create an "infinite scroll" style archive. Details/options/implementation may change.
### Permalink and filename formatter
Permalink (URLs for individual posts) can be customized. This part is *meh* and subject to change.
| String | Value | Example |
|--------|----------|---------|
| %Y | Year | 2017 |
| %M | Month | 04 |
| %D | Day | 14 |
| %F | Filename | foo |
| %T | Title | bar |
`Filename` is a cleaned version of the post's original filename with the extension removed. Filenames and titles will be "cleaned" of characters unsuitable for links, with whitespace replaced by `-`.
### Filters
Arbitrary regular expressions can be executed on each post to create domain-specific and site-specific modifications.
Here are the real world examples of regular expressions that filter each post on my personal site -
```yaml
filters:
- s: <photo id="(.+)">
r: <div class="photo"><img src="/img/$1" /></div>
- s: <segue />
r: <p class="segue">· · ·</p>
- s: <youtube id="(.+)">
r: <p class="video"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=$1"><img src="/img/$1.jpg" /></a></p>
- s: "amazon:(.+)"
r: "http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/$1/decommodify-20/"
```
### Tags
There is preliminary support for tag style metadata per post.
Add a "tags" field to your post preamble. Tags should be comma separated.
```
tags: TagOne, tag two, a third tag, fourth
```
Tags will be normalized to lowercase, with spaces replaced with underscores. So the above would have tagged a post with --
`tagone tag_two a_third_tag fourth`
Tags are accessible in each post struct via the `Tags` field.
To create archives of tags, create a template named `tags` -- it will behave the same as an `archive` template, but create a file at HTML_DIR/tag/tag_name/index.html for each unique tag.
### Binary Files as Posts
Preliminary support to treat binary files as standalone posts.
Drop image files with "jpg" or other image extensions into the "txt" dir.
* post's ContentType will be set to "image"
* text fields will be empty strings
* metadata will be populated as it can via exif (sorta)
Video and audio files have preliminary support too -- see post.go
### Example configurations/sites/themes
*not done*
### Auto-rebuild/deployment
*also not done*
## TODO
* complete and document media support (image/mp3/video/binary file posts)
* sample sites/templates
* proper man pages for docs
