pyssg - Static Site Generator written in Python

Generates HTML files from MD files for a static site, personally using it for a blog-like site.

Initially inspired by Roman Zolotarev's ssg5 and rssg, Luke Smith's lb and sup and, pedantic.software's blogit.

Features and to-do

NOTE: WIP, there will be changes that will break pyssg generations/config setup.

• Build static site parsing markdown files ( *.md -> *.html)
  • Uses jinja for templating.
  • Preserves hand-made *.html files.
  • Tag functionality, useful for blog-style sites.
• Build sitemap.xml file.
  • Include manually added *.html files.
• Build rss.xml file.
  • Include manually added *.html files.
• YAML for configuration file, uses PyYAML.
  • Support for multiple "documents". PyYAML supports this. In pyssg context, it means it can generate multiple websites (I personally use it for subdomains).
  • Support for more complex directory structure to support configuration on a per directory basis.
• File checksum checking for modification of files.
• Option/change to using an SQL database instead of the custom solution.
• Use external markdown extensions.
  • So far only extension configuration is for my own extension pymdvar.

Markdown features

This program uses the base markdown syntax plus additional syntax, all thanks to python-markdown that provides extensions. The following extensions are used:

• Extra (collection of QoL extensions).
• Meta-Data.
• Sane Lists.
• SmartyPants.
• Table of Contents.
  • With permalink=True and baselevel=2, for more: python-markdown toc.
• WikiLinks.
• pymdvar (made by me).
• yafg - Yet Another Figure Generator
• Markdown Checklist
• PyMdown Extensions
  • Caret
  • Tilde
  • Mark

Installation

Install with pip:

pip install pyssg

Probably will add a PKBUILD (and possibly submit it to the AUR) in the future.

Usage

1. Get the default configuration file:

pyssg --copy-default-config -c <path/to/config>

• Where -c is optional as by default $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/pyssg/config.yaml is used.

2. Edit the config file created as needed.

• config.yaml is parsed using PyYAML, more about the config file.

3. Initialize the directory structures (source, destination, template) and move template files:

pyssg -i

• You can modify the basic templates as needed (see variables available for Jinja).

• Strongly recommended to edit the rss.xml template.

4. Place your *.md files somewhere inside the source directory. It accepts sub-directories. Optionally configure for subdirectories if they are to be treated a bit different.

• Recommended (no longer mandatory) metadata keys that can be added to the top of .md files:

title: the title of your blog entry or whatever
author: your name or online handle
	another name maybe for multiple authors?
lang: the language the entry is written on
summary: a summary of the entry
tags: english
	short
	tutorial
	etc

• You can add more meta-data keys as long as it is Python-Markdown compliant, and these will ve available as Jinja variables in the meta object (dict[str, Any]).

5. Build the *.html with:

pyssg -b

• After this, you have ready to deploy *.html files from the dst directory.

Config file

All sections/options need to be compliant with PyYAML which should be compliant with YAML 1.2. Additionaly, I've added the custom tag !join which concatenates strings from an array, which an be used as follows:

variable: &variable_reference_name "value"
other_variable: !join [*variable_reference_name, "other_value", 1]

Which would produce other_variable: "valueother_value1". Also environment variables will be expanded internally.

Note: URL's shouldn't have the trailing slash /.

The following is a list of config items that need to be present in the config unless stated otherwise:

%YAML 1.2
---
# not needed, shown here as an example of the !join tag
define: &root "$HOME/path/to/" # $HOME expands to /home/user, for example

title: "Example site"
path:
  src: !join [*root, "src"] # $HOME/path/to/src
  dst: "$HOME/some/other/path/to/dst"
  plt: "plt"
  db: !join [*root, "src/", "db.psv"]
url:
  main: "https://example.com"
  # I personally use a "static" url for images/scripts/css/etc, not necessary
  static: "https://static.example.com"
fmt:
  date: "%a, %b %d, %Y @ %H:%M %Z"
  list_date: "%b %d" # not necessary
  list_sep_date: "%B %Y" # not necessary
dirs:
  /: # root "dir_path", whatever is sitting directly under "src"
    cfg:
      plt: "page.html" # each page template, relative to path/plt
      tags: False
      index: True
      rss: True
      sitemap: True
      exclude_dirs: ["articles", "blog"] # optional; list of subdirs to exclude when parsing this "dir_path"
...

So far only pymdvar can be configured by including the following to the config:

exts:
  pymdvar:
    variables:
      SOME_VAR: "some value"
      some_other_variable: 123
    enable_env: True # to read environment variables

The config under dirs are just per-subdirectory configuration of directories under src, which I called "dir_paths" for lack of creativity. Only the / "dir_path" is required as it is the config for the root src path files. Mandatory config items for each "dir_path":

cfg:
  plt: "template.html"
  tags: True
  index: True
  rss: True
  sitemap: True
  exclude: [] # not necessary

So that extra "dir_paths" can be added under dirs:

dirs:
  /:
    cfg:
      ...
  articles:
    cfg:
      ...
  gallery:
    cfg:
      ...
  etc:
    ...

The following will be added on runtime to the configuration:

%YAML 1.2
---
fmt:
  rss_date: "%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S GMT" # fixed
  sitemap_date: "%Y-%m-%d" # fixed
info:
  version: "x.y.z" # current 'pyssg' version (0.5.1.dev16, for example)
  debug: True/False # depending if --debug was used when executing
rss_run_date: # date the program was run, formatted with 'fmt.rss_date'
sitemap_run_date: # date the program was run, formatted with 'fmt.sitemap_date'
...

You can add any other option/section that you can later use in the Jinja templates via the exposed config object.

Available Jinja variables

These variables are exposed to use within the templates. The below list is displayed in the form of variable (type) (available from): description. field1/field2/field3/... describe config file section from the YAML file and option and object.attribute corresponding object and it's attribute.

• config (dict[str, Any]) (all): parsed config file plus the added options internally (as described in config file).
• dir_config (dict[str, Any]) (all*): parsed dir_config file plus the added options internally (as described in config file). *This is for all of the specific "dir_path" files, as per configured in the YAML file dirs.dir_path.cfg (for exmaple dirs./.cfg for the required dir_path).
• all_pages (list(Page)) (all): list of all the pages, sorted by creation time, reversed.
• page (Page) (page.html): contains the following attributes (genarally these are parsed from the metadata in the *.md files):
  • title (str): title of the page.
  • author (list[str]): list of authors of the page.
  • lang (str): page language, used for the general html tag lang attribute.
  • summary (str): summary of the page, as specified in the *.md file.
  • content (str): actual content of the page, this is the html.
  • toc (str): table of contents as taken from md.toc.
  • toc_tokens (list[dict[str, Any]]): table of contents tokens as taken from md.toc_tokens.
  • cdatetime (datetime.datetime): creation datetime object of the page.
  • cdate (method(FMT: str)): takes the name of the fmt.FMT and applies it to the cdatetime object.
  • cdate_rss (str): formatted cdatetime as required by rss.
  • cdate_sitemap (str): formatted cdatetime as required by sitemap.
  • mdatetime (datetime.datetime): modification datetime object of the page. Defaults to None.
  • mdate (method(FMT: str)): takes the name of the fmt.FMT and applies it to the mdatetime object.
  • mdate_rss (str): formatted mdatetime as required by rss.
  • mdate_sitemap (str): formatted mdatetime as required by sitemap.
  • tags (list[tuple[str]]): list of tuple of tags of the page, containing the name and the url of the tag, respectively. Defaults to empty list.
  • url (str): url of the page, this already includes the url/main from config file.
  • next/previous (Page): reference to the next or previous page object (containing all these attributes). Defaults to None.
  • meta (dict[str, list[str]]): meta dict as obtained from python-markdown, in case you use a meta tag not directly supported, it will be available there.
• tag (tuple[str]) (tag.html): tuple of name and url of the current tag.
• tag_pages (list[Page]) (tag.html): similar to all_pages but contains all the pages for the current tag.
• all_tags (list[tuple[str]]) (all): similar to page.tags but contains all the tags.