Systatic: Static Site Authoring Tool in NodeJS
Inspired by Middleman, this Node.js toolchain is written with Bricks and Servitude, to allow the quick authoring if static web apps.
The focus here is to quickly develop and deploy apps that are heavier on CSS or Javascript, leveraging tools that allow the least amount of typing to get the job done (eg. Less, Stylus, CoffeeScript, Jade). Finally, to optimize file management so your apps load as quickly as possible (presumably via some CDN).
Getting Started
First you need to install the systatic server. It's really just a bricksjs+servitude server with a bunch of predefined paths and templates.
npm install systatic -g
systatic new my_proj
cd my_proj
systatic
The last command runs the server, by default port 3000 (like bricks, you can change the port with --port
).
Configuration
The default generated project will come with a config.json file. This file defines various source and plugin combinations. Generally you should just follow the default settings, but if you wish to alter anything (for example, change the javascripts route from /javascripts
to /js
) change this file.
Build
Since the point is to generate a static site, the next command you run will be build
. This will remove the need for an app server like nodejs, and allow you to just dump the static files somewhere like CloudFront.
systatic build
Test
Once your static files are built and compressed, you can test out the files output in the build
directory with the test
command. This just runs a static server on the same development port in your config.json
file.
systatic test
Coming Soon
Deploy
With that generated static content, next you'll want to deploy to some server, git repo, CDN... whatever.
systatic deploy
Hooks
I'm reimplementing the hard-coded actions as sets of discreet stages which can be configured, allowing third-party plugins to add their own stage to the build/render toolchain. Current thoughts:
First:
- Every action can be attached to run before/after any other action.
An example may be if someone wanted to added a function to compress a set of icons used as CSS into sprites, and pass that information into the next action (which would be bound to the compress stage)
Stages (executing a stage executes every stage up to it):
- clean
- resource
- assets
- compress
- publish
eg.
systatic assets
Would clean the output directory, build the html resource, and build the assets.