icecake 0.2.1

An easy and cool static site generator

Icecake
=======

A cool and easy static site builder.

Jinja templates. Markdown. Pygments source code higlighting. Blog-aware.
Atom feeds. Live preview. Clean URLs. MIT license. Minimal design.
Words. Dots.

|Build Status|

Designed for Simplicity
-----------------------

Icecake aims to be simple. It has a simple license. It does not support
lots of features. For example, it does not support plugins, themes,
different templating backends, or any of a long list of other features.

Icecake is less than 500 lines of python and still has everything you
need to have a pleasant time writing and updating your personal website
or blog.

I hope that this simplicity makes it easy for you to read the code and
add any feature(s) you can't live without.

If you are already familiar with how static site builders work and
you're comfortable with Jinja templates, you can use the following
commands to get started:

::

pip install icecake
icecake init mysite.com
cd mysite.com
icecake preview

If these topics are new to you, keep reading for more details!

Installation
------------

::

pip install icecake

How do I get ``pip``?

``pip`` usually comes with Python. If it's missing, you can get it
`here <https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/installing/#do-i-need-to-install-pip>`__.

Creating a Website
==================

First, we'll setup a site:

::

icecake init mysite
cd mysite

It will look something like this:

::

.
├── content
│   ├── articles
│   │   └── hello-world.md
│   ├── articles.html
│   ├── atom.xml
│   └── index.html
├── layouts
│   ├── basic.html
│   └── markdown.html
├── output (empty for now)
└── static
└── css
├── main.css
└── syntax.css

The starter site includes a minimal theme and the articles folder will
help you start blogging right away (if you want to do that).

Run ``icecake preview`` to view the site. The site will be automatically
regenerated when you make changes.

Generating the Site
-------------------

You can run ``icecake build`` to build your site. Icecake will generate
each page and then exit (or error). If you get an error you can use
``icecake build --debug`` to get some more detailed information about
what is happening.

Internally, there is a 3 step process for generating the site.

1. Icecake reads all of the files under ``content`` and renders them.
Markdown is converted to HTML and Jinja templates are evaluated.
2. Icecake writes all of the rendered files into ``output``.
``articles/hello-world.md`` becomes
``articles/hello-world/index.html`` so you get nice URLs on any
hosting platform.
3. Files from ``static`` are copied as-is to ``output`` (using the same
directory structure as the originals).

A page's URL is based on the filename, without the file extension. For
example, ``articles/hello-world.md`` becomes ``articles/hello-world/``.
There is a special exception for files named ``index.html`` or
``index.md``. We usually don't want these to end up as e.g.
``articles/index/``. If you do actually want "index" to be in the URL
you can explicitly set this by specifying the ``slug``.

When you're ready, you can use ``rsync`` or ``s3cmd`` or an FTP client
to publish ``output`` to the web.

Editing Content
---------------

You can write content in either
`Markdown <https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax>`__ or
HTML. Markdown files (idenfified by ``.md`` or ``.markdown``) are
automatically parsed and rendered using the ``markdown.html`` template.
Source code blocks are highlighted using
`Pygments <http://pygments.org>`__.

HTML files are evaluating using Jinja. Refer to the `Jinja Template
Designer
documentation <http://jinja.pocoo.org/docs/dev/templates/#template-designer-documentation>`__
for details. We will also highlight some important Icecake-specific
features related to templates below.

Markdown files are handled as a special case inside Icecake, so you
can't mix Markdown and Jinja in the same file. However, you can
customize the markdown template by editing ``markdown.html`` or by
overriding the ``template`` metadata field and specifying a new
template. See the **Page Metadata** section for more info.

Page Metadata
-------------

At the top of each file you can add some metadata. You should add this
to all your markdown pages. Metadata is usually not needed for HTML
pages.

::

title = Installing Ruby the Correct Way
date = 2013-03-27
tags = ruby bundler rbenv ruby-build
slug = installing-ruby
template = custom-markdown.html
++++

Your content starts here!

- ``title`` (required) The title of your page
- ``date`` (required) The date your page is published (for display
only)
- ``tags`` (optional) Space-separated list of tags, which can be used
to categorize your page.
- ``slug`` (optional) This will be used instead of the filename in the
URL
- ``template`` (optional) This overrides the template
(``markdown.html`` by default) used to render the page

Some other metadata are generated for you automatically:

- ``filepath`` Relative path of the file inside ``content``, such as
``articles/hello-world.md``
- ``folder`` Just the folder part like ``articles/``
- ``ext`` The file extension (``.html`` or ``.md`` for example)
- ``url`` The path part of the URL, such as ``/articles/hello-world/``

These metadata are important not just to make your page display
correctly, but also to query other pages in your templates. You will do
this to make a list of all your pages, for example.

Rendering Metadata
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Whenever you are writing a template the current page's metadata are
available via their names, so you can show the page title via
``{{ title }}`` or the publish date via ``{{ date }}``. You can also
write ``if`` statements that reference this information.

To show a list of tags for your page you can write something like this:

::

<h1>{{ title }}</h1>

<p>Tagged
{% for tag in tags %}
<span class="tag">{{ tag }}</span>
{% endfor %}
</p>

When Is Metadata **Required**?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Metadata is only required if you reference it somewhere, such as using
``{{ title }}`` or when using ``site`` (see below). I recommend always
using it on Markdown files and only using it on HTML if you have to. The
default Markdown templates assume that you have provided titles, tags,
and publish dates in your metadata and won't work properly if these are
missing.

There are a lot of things you can accomplish via Jinja template
variables so you don't necessarily need to use metadata make your site
to show up the way you want.

**Warning:** if you try to query a page using ``site`` (below) and a
piece of metadata is missing, your query will fail.

Site Helpers
============

Site helpers are special features available in templates that allow you
to query all pages and tags across your site. For example, if you want
to incldue a list of your 5 latest blog entries on your homepage, the
site helpers can do this for you.

Querying Pages
--------------

You can search across the pages on your site using ``site.pages``.

::

site.pages(option=value, ...)

With no arguments, ``site.pages`` includes *all* pages on your site. You
can filter this list using the following filter options:

- ``path`` Filter the list of pages based on the path under
``content/``. The ``path`` string is compared using ``startswith()``
so ``cake`` will match ``cake/chocolate`` but not ``chocolate/cake``.
- ``tag`` Filter based on a tag. If a page has the tag you specified,
it will be included.
- ``order`` Sort the list of results by the specified field, like
``date`` or ``title``. Use ``-date`` to reverse the order.
- ``limit`` Limit the number of items you get back. The limit you
specify can be higher that the number of actual results; you'll just
get as many as are available.

You can combine these options much like SQL. They are evaluated in the
order listed above, so a ``path`` filter is applied first, second
``tag``, third ``order``, and finally ``limit``.

Warning: If you try to sort based on a metadata property that is not
specified on every item, sort will fail! Icecake does not enforce that
all of your pages have the same metadata so this is up to you. Use
``icecake build --debug`` if you're having trouble figuring out which
file(s) are missing which field(s).

We'll show two examples of how to use this below.

List Articles Tagged "Blog"
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

You can use this to create a blog index page, for example:

::

{% for page in site.pages(tag="blog", order="title") %}
<a href="{{ url }}">{{ title }}</a>
{% endfor %}

List 5 Recent Articles
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

::

{% for page in site.pages(path="articles/", order="-date", limit=5) %}
<a href="{{ url }}">{{ title }}</a>
{% endfor %}

If you want to match a folder named ``articles/`` but not a file named
``articles.html``, make sure to include ``/`` at the end!

Generating an Atom Feed
-----------------------

You can use ``site.atom`` to create an Atom feed for specific pages on
your site. The query behavior works exactly the same way as
``site.pages`` so please refer to that for details.

Unlike ``site.pages`` the atom feed is simply printed out -- you don't
need to iterate over it.

::

{{
site.atom(
path="articles/",
order="-date",
site_url="http://example.com",
feed_url="http://example.com"+url,
feed_title="My Blog",
feed_subtitle=None,
author="Me!"
)
}}

Obviously you should fill in your name and site URL above. Note that
most of these options are required in order for the feed to work
correctly, but if you want to skip one you can specify ``None`` as the
value. Also, you can use ``"https://yoursite"+url`` to automatically set
the feed URL to point to the current page.

Listing Tags
------------

You can use ``site.tags`` to list all of the tags in use on your site.
You cannot currently query or filter the list of tags.

::

{% for tag in site.tags() %}
...
{% endfor %}

Don't confuse this with ``tags``!

Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
---------------------------------

Open an issue! https://github.com/cbednarski/icecake/issues

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:target: https://travis-ci.org/cbednarski/icecake