gulp-ssg

A gulp plugin to generate a static site.

Usage

var ssg = require('gulp-ssg');
var site = {
    title: 'My site'
};

gulp.task('html', function() {
    return gulp.src('content/**/*.md')
        .pipe(ssg(site))
        .pipe(gulp.dest('public/'));
});

This will rename the files so they have pretty URLs e.g.

content/index.md        -> public/index.html
content/foo.md          -> public/foo/index.html
content/bar/index.md    -> public/bar/index.html
content/bar/hello.md    -> public/bar/hello/index.html

It will also add properties to a meta object of each file:

• file.meta.url
• file.meta.isHome
• file.meta.isIndex
• file.meta.sectionUrl
• file.meta.section

Finally, it will add an index property to the passed in site object which is a tree of all the content. The above example would look like:

    {
        name: 'root',
        url: '/',
        files: [<index.html>, <foo/index.html> ] // All files in this section
        sections: [
            {
                name: 'bar',
                url: 'bar',
                files: [<bar/index.html>, <bar/foo/index.html>]
            }
        ]
    }

As implied above each file has a reference back to it's section in this tree.

Example

It gets more interesting when combined with other pipes. For example:

var ssg = require('gulp-ssg');
var frontmatter = require('gulp-front-matter');
var marked = require('gulp-marked');
var site = {
    title: 'My site'
};

gulp.task('html', function() {
    return gulp.src('content/**/*.md')
        .pipe(frontmatter({
            property: 'meta'
        }))
        .pipe(marked())
        .pipe(ssg(site, {
            property: 'meta'
        }))
        .pipe(gulp.dest('public/'));
});

This will extract any YAML front-matter, convert the content of each file from markdown to HTML, then run the ssg. The data extracted from the front-matter will be combined with the data extracted by the ssg in the meta property.

## Templates

A common requirement of static sites is to pass the content through some template engine. There is nothing built into gulp-ssg to do this, but it's very easy to add with another pipe.

After the step above you will have created a bunch of HTML files. Now you can run them through a templating pipe. All the files are processed before the next pipe, so the template will have access to the complete site index for things like generating global navigation, or a list of sub-pages in the current section.

So to add this to the above example:

var ssg = require('gulp-ssg');
var frontmatter = require('gulp-front-matter');
var marked = require('gulp-marked');
var fs = require('fs');
var es = require('event-stream');
var mustache = require('mustache');
var site = {
    title: 'My site'
};

gulp.task('html', function() {

    var template = String(fs.readFileSync('templates/page.html'));

    return gulp.src('content/**/*.md')
        .pipe(frontmatter({
            property: 'meta'
        }))
        .pipe(marked())
        .pipe(ssg(site, {
            property: 'meta'
        }))
        .pipe(es.map(function(file, cb) {
            var html = mustache.render(template, {
                page: file.meta,
                site: site,
                content: String(file.contents)
            });
            file.contents = new Buffer(html);
            cb(null, file);
        }))
        .pipe(gulp.dest('public/'));
});

This uses es.map to modify the stream directly, but if you have a common way of rendering many sites it might be worth writing a little plug-in with a bit more error handling etc.

Caveats

• Each directory must contain a file with a base name of index (e.g. index.md) to have the site index fully traversed.

Options

baseUrl string

The base URL of the site, defaults to '/'. This should be the path to where your site will eventually be deployed.

sort string

A property to sort pages by in the index, defaults to url. For example, this could be a property like order extracted from the YAML front-matter, giving content editors full control over the order of pages.

property string

The name of the property to attach data to, defaults to meta.

sectionProperties array

A list of properties to extract from index pages to add to the section, defaults to an empty list. For example, you could add a sectionTitle to front-matter in your index.md files, then use this it for link text in your global navigation.

Previewing Your Website

Add a watch task to run a server for previewing your website:

var http = require('http'),
	ecstatic = require('ecstatic');

gulp.task('watch', function() {
	http.createServer(
        ecstatic({ root: __dirname + '/public'  })
    ).listen(8745);
    console.log('Preview at http://localhost:8745');

    gulp.watch('content/', ['html']);
    gulp.watch('templates/', ['default']);
});