MarkdownWebsite

A small CLI utility for making a website using Markdown and Handlebars.

Usage

Creating a website

Using MarkdownWebsite is pretty easy. Once you have the binary created, invoke it as follows:

MarkdownWebsite.exe website -i "C:\website\src" -o "C:\website\static" -l "C:\website\layout"

-i is the input directory

-o is the output directory

-l is the layout directory

As long as your layout is structured properly, this should produce a website from your layouts compiling all markdown files into html and copying over any other file present in your source directory.

Warning: MarkdownWebsite will delete the contents of the output directory prior to performing any compilation or copying activities.

Handlebars directives are only processed on Markdown files.

Compiling Handlebars templates

MarkdownWebsite can also be used as a simple command-line Handlebars template compiler. Use this command:

MarkdownWebsite.exe handlebars -i "C:\website\src\somefile.html" -o "C:\website\static\somefile.html" -p "C:\website\layout\partials"

-i is the input file

-o is the output file

-l is the partials directory

As you can see you can use this to compile templates with any prior extension.

Compiling Markdown

Finally, MarkdownWebsite can also be used as a simple command-line Markdown compiler. Use this command:

MarkdownWebsite.exe markdown -i "C:\website\src\somefile.md" -o "C:\website\static\somefile.html"

-i is the input file

-o is the output file

File structure

There are no restrictions on the layout of your input folder (please don't put your layout folder in it!), but the layout folder has certain requirements:

• Any assets that you want to refer to globally should go in the assets folder, and you can refer to this in your markdown or templates by using the helper {{asset 'path/to/image.png'}}. The compiler will automatically figure out the correct relative path to that asset when compiling.
• Any partials should be placed in the partials folder of the layout folder.

Please refer to the example for sample input and output.

Some possible gotchas

There are some quirks that you'll have to keep in mind when composing your website in markdown:

• Try to keep handlebars statements to not use spaces. Due to the way HandlebarsDotNet works {{#>page}} works but {{#> page }} does not.
• If the first line after the @partial-block in one of your templates is indented four spaces, it can get interpretted by the markdown compiler as preformatted code and thus mangled. Try not to do that.
• Partials can be nested in folders, but no two partials can share the same name.

To be added

• Support for Handlebars helpers in files?
• Support for non-standard Markdown formats (including Github-flavored markdown)