markupdown 0.1.0

A modular static site generator in Python

Markupdown

Markupdown is a dead-simple static site generator. You write a build.py file that calls Markupdown commands and run it. Here's what a build.py file looks like:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

from markupdown import *

# Copy files to the site directory
cp("assets/css/*.css", "site/css")
cp("assets/js/*.js", "site/js")
cp("assets/images/*.[jpg|jpeg|png]", "site/images")
cp("*.ico", "site")
cp("pages/**/*.md", "site")

# Update markdown frontmatter
title("site/**/*.md")
siblings("site/**/index.md")
children("site/**/index.md")
changelog("site/**/*.md")
transform("site/**/*.md", lambda md, _: md.frontmatter().pop("source", None))

# Render pages
render("site/**/*.md", site={"title": "My Site"})

Commands like title and index just scan a directory to create, update, or delete markdown files. title, for example, adds a title field to each matching markdown file's frontmatter.

Commands

Markupdown ships with the following commands:

• changelog: Updates the created_at, updated_at, and change_log fields in markdown frontmatter
• cp: Copies files to the site directory
• transform: Applies a transformation function to the frontmatter in markdown files
• siblings: Generates siblings frontmatter for sibling markdown files
• children: Generates children frontmatter for child directories with index.md files
• init: Initializes a new site
• ls: Lists files in the site directory
• render: Renders the markdown using liquid templates
• serve: Starts a local HTTP server to view the site
• title: Updates the title field in the markdown frontmatter
• feed: Generates an RSS and Atom feeds

I'll probably add more (e.g. sitemap, minify, social). It's a work in progress.

Installation

pip install markupdown

Markupdown is compatible with Python 3.10 to 3.12

Usage

After you install Markupdown, go to an empty directory and initialize it:

python -m markupdown init

This will create a scaffolding with files and directories like this:

.
├── css
│   └── style.css
├── img
│   └── image.png
├── pages
│   ├── index.md
│   └── posts
│       ├── index.md
│       ├── post1.md
│       └── post2.md
├── templates
│   ├── _footer_.liquid
│   ├── _head_.liquid
│   ├── _header_.liquid
│   ├── _pages_.liquid
│   └── default.liquid
├── .gitignore
└── build.py

Run ./build.py to generate your site. The output will be in the site directory.

Markupdown comes with a server you can start with:

python -m markupdown serve

Open http://localhost:8000. You should see a (rather ugly) stub site.

You can clean your site directory with:

python -m markupdown clean

Philosophy

Markupdown is designed to be pretty dumb. It's just a collection of functions that help you do three things:

• Stage your site directory with markdown, css, js, images, and so forth (using cp)
• Transform the files in site to add metadata or create new files (using title, index, nav, etc.)
• Render the markdown using liquid templates (using render)

That's it. Stupid simple. Worse is better.