Rust Custom Static Site Generator

A custom, lightweight Static Site Generator (SSG) built entirely in Rust. It converts Markdown files into static HTML pages, designed for simplicity, speed, and easy automation with Markdown-based note-taking tools like Obsidian.

Project Structure

The repository is organized into four distinct directories:

• content/: Contains the raw Markdown (.md) files. The blog/ subdirectory is processed dynamically, while root files like index.md are handled manually.
• src/: Contains the core Rust engine responsible for site generation.
• static/: Houses all static assets, including CSS stylesheets, images, and favicons.
• templates/: Contains the HTML layout structures, such as base.html and blog_list.html.

Core Engine (src/)

The generation logic is separated into four key Rust modules:

• main.rs: The main execution point. It creates the public/ output directory, copies static assets from the static/ folder, initializes the template engine, and triggers the build process for both the standalone pages and the dynamic blog section.
• blog.rs: Handles the blog content pipeline. It iterates through the content/blog/ directory, extracts the first # heading to use as the post title, generates individual HTML files, and compiles the main blog archive index.
• models.rs: Defines the data structures. It contains the BlogPost struct (holding the title and slug), utilizing Serde to pass serialized data to the template engine.
• utils.rs: Contains essential helper functions. It includes a recursive directory copy function for static assets and a universal build_page function that parses Markdown into HTML and injects it into the templates.

Templating

The project uses a template engine to maintain a consistent layout across all generated pages. The base.html template acts as the main wrapper, accepting raw parsed HTML via a {{ content | safe }} tag and dynamically resolving relative paths for CSS and images using a {{ root_path }} variable.

How to Run

1. Prerequisites: Ensure you have Rust and Cargo installed on your system.
2. Build and Generate: Run the following command in the root of the project to compile the Rust code and generate the site:

   cargo run

   This will process everything and output the final, ready-to-deploy HTML files into the public/ directory.