marquee-static-sdk

This is pre-release software. Unless you work at Marquee, or are one of its clients or partners, you probably should not do anything important with this yet.

Marquee Static SDK

The Marquee Static SDK is framework for compiling web publications and deploying them into static hosting environments. The SDK as a whole is designed to work with the Marquee editorial suite and content platform, but parts of it may be used in a standalone fashion.

This package requires node and is distributed through npm. It assumes a willingness to work in a command line environment and a basic familiarity with node and git. Care is taken to keep the learning curve minimal, making projects developed using this SDK accessible to a wide variety of skill sets.

Technical Overview

The SDK provides components and tools for building compilers that compile structured content and code into HTML, JavaScript, and CSS for front-end presentation of a publication. While not required, the SDK facilitates using CoffeeScript (specifically CJSX) and Sass. The compiled output can then be deployed to scalable static hosting providers such as Amazon S3 and distributed across a content delivery network.

Included in the SDK is a local development server that automatically compiles changes, and an asset pipeline optimized for a browserify- and Sass-based workflow that provides minification and hashing in production mode. There is also a set of common components using React.js to generate markup as well as necessary client-side JS and structural styles.

For compilation on content-change, Marquee runs a service that executes per-publication compilers whenever a publication’s content is released. This service also will run a compiler when it receives a git push, providing a way to centralize publication deployments. The Marquee content platform also has a search endpoint that can be used client-side to provide full text search and facilitate more dynamic effects. Additional custom or third party microservices and backends may be used to create a rich, progressively enhanced reader experience.

Getting Started

Using the Marquee content platform with an requires a Publication Token for the corresponding publication. The best way to begin tinkering on a new SDK project is to clone the sample static project which includes a token for reading from a sample publication. By swapping this read-only token with another token issued through Marquee, the same SDK project could use another publication's content.

Note: the SDK has not been tested on Windows and very likely will not work properly. If Windows support is required, please create an issue.

1. Make sure node and git are installed by running these commands:

   $ node --version
   v4.2.2
   $ git --version
   git version 2.3.1
   

   The Static SDK requires at least node v4.x.x. If you get a command not found error for node, go to nodejs.org to download and install node. Generally any version of git should work. If you do not have git, get it here.

2. Create a new directory for your publication and extract the latest release of the sample project:

   $ mkdir <project name> && cd <project name>
   $ curl -L https://github.com/marquee/frontend-boilerplate/tarball/master | tar -zx -C . --strip-components 1
   

3. Start the development server with the following command:

   $ npm run develop
   

   Details about the process will scroll down the screen, but when it’s done, you can simply visit localhost:5000 to view the new project in a browser. It should look something like this. View source or poke around in the generated .dist/ folder of the project to see what the compiler generates.

4. … make changes, etc