hastie

Hastie - Static Site Generator in Go

Hastie is a simple static site generator in Go. I created it as a replacement of Jekyll. I wanted a project to play with and learn Go and Jekyll was slow and Ruby dependencies give me a headache. The Go binary is completely portable and includes all dependencies, so once built makes it easy in the future.

If you are looking for a tool to tweak and play with the Go language, then this might be fun. Most customizations will probably require code changes. The reason I created the tool was to learn Go, I'm open sourcing to hopefully help others play with Go.

If you just want simple blogging and no headaches, setup a hosted blog on WordPress.com it's an easy platform and you'll be up in minutes.

Note: The name Hastie is from a character in the novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Install Notes

Install Go: http://golang.org/doc/install.html#fetch

Get Hastie: go get github.com/mkaz/hastie

If you have your Go environment setup, go get will automatically create the binary in $GOPATH/bin.

I set GOPATH to my home directory, so binaries go in bin

Binaries

Download binaries for Linux, Mac, and Windows from Github releases tab.

Usage

$ hastie [-flags]

Flags:

  -config string
        Config file (default "hastie.json")
  -debug
        Debug output (verbose)
  -help
        show this help
  -nomarkdown
        do not use markdown conversion
  -verbose
        Show info level
  -version
        Display version and quit

Configuration file format (default ./hastie.json)

{
  "SourceDir" : "posts",
  "LayoutDir" : "layouts",
  "PublishDir": "public"
}

Hastie walks through the SourceDir and finds all .md or .html. It applies the template from LayoutDir and generates HTML copying to PublishDir. It uses Go's template language for templates and markdown for content.

Here is sample site layout: (see test directory)

layouts/footer.html
layouts/header.html
layouts/indexpage.html
layouts/post.html
posts/2011-03-02-angelica.html
posts/index.md
posts/zebra/2009-12-12-sample-post.md
posts/zebra/2012-02-14-hastie-intro.md

This will generate:

public/angelica.html
public/index.html
public/zebra/sample-post.html
public/zebra/hastie-intro.html

Static Directory

If a directory named static exists in the LayoutDir, Hastie will copy it as-is to the root of the PublishDir as static.

Template Variables

Hastie uses Go's standard template package, see Go's documentation for the format and capabilities.

Data fields available to templates:

.Title          -- Page Title
.Date           -- Page Date format using .Date.Format "Jan 2, 2006"
.Content        -- Converted HTML Content
.Category       -- Category (directory)
.OutFile        -- file path
.Recent         -- list most recent files, latest first
.Url            -- Url for this page
.PrevUrl        -- Previous Page Url
.PrevTitle      -- Previous Page Title
.NextUrl        -- Next Page Url
.NextTitle      -- Next Page Title
.PrevCatUrl     -- Previous Page Url by Category
.PrevCatTitle   -- Previous Page Title by Category
.NextCatUrl     -- Next Page Url by Category
.NextCatTitle   -- Next Page Title by Category
.Params         -- Map of User Parameters set in front matter
.Params.BaseUrl -- BaseUrl as defined in hastie.json

.Categories.CATEGORY -- list of most recent files for CATEGORY

Functions Available:

.Reverse            -- reverse sort order of list
.Recent.Limit n     -- limit recent list to n items
.Trim               -- trim leading/trailing slashes (relative links)

Examples:

Show 3 most recent titles:

{{ range .Recent.Limit 3 }}
    {{ .Title }}
{{ end }}

Show 3 most recent from math category:

{{ range .CategoryList.math }}
    {{ .Title }}
{{ end }}

Show oldest items first:

{{ range .Recent.Reverse }}
    {{.Title }}
{{ end }}

Trim leading slash to make links relative:

<a href="{{ .Url | trim }}"> Relative link </a>

Markdown Front Matter

Hastie uses the same format for specifying fields as Jekyll, front matter. The parameters are specified at the top of the markdown document in a section delimited with ---.

Example top of markdown document:

---
title: Blog carefully my friend
layout: post
date: 2012-02-14
---

This is my content...

User-defined Parameters

Hastie supports user-defined parameters and makes them available to the templates using .Params.YOURPARAM

Example setting and using a parameter.

Setting parameter:

---
title: Blog carefully my friend
layout: post
date: 2012-02-14
guest: Hemingway
---

Using parameter in a template:

{{ if .Params.guest }}
    Guest Author: {{ .Params.guest }}
{{ end }}

Using Filters (Example: Less CSS, CoffeeScript)

Hastie allows for the use of command-line processing of files, provided the process takes the filename as input and spits out the results. It does so using processFilters configuration. You set a file extension mapped to the utility to process and the final extension.

Configuration in hastie.json

"processFilters": {
    "less": ["/usr/local/bin/lessc", "css"]
}

The above example sets any file with the extension .less will be converted to .css using lessc binary and copied to the public directory at the same spot in the directory tree as the original less file.

Disable Markdown

UseMarkdown is optional parameter in the config. By default, Hastie will convert documents to markdown. If you don't want documents to be converted globally, you can specify it false on the command-line or UseMarkdown: false in the JSON config.

If you want to disable markdown on a per document basis, you can put markdown: no in the front matter of the document.

Contributions

Thanks to all the contributors!

Any contributions are welcome, be it in feature requests, bug reports, documentation, or pull requests.

License

Licensed under MIT see LICENSE file.