Rigid.bash

One of my projects these days is making a simple static web page generator in Bash. It's a hell of a good way to learn Bash scripting.

I like minimalism and KISS principles. It's something fascinating about using the rawest materials possible. Easier to maintain, more durable, more ... rigid.

My demands

• No database or configuration file
• Using only Bash and basic tools (awk, sed, etc.)
• Simple templates
• Markdown support

Installation

git clone git://github.com/atmoz/rigid.git
cd rigid
sudo make

No installation is really needed. You can just download and run the script. But if you would like the script available in path (so you can run it wherever you are), the included Makefile (sudo make) will copy the script to /usr/local/bin for you.

Make sure you have at least Bash version 4 and the GNU implementation of AWK (gawk).

Usage

rigid [sourceDir] [targetDir]

Create a folder with markdown files (.md) and run rigid. HTML files will be generated in "$PWD.rigid" by default. You can add a file called "rigid.template.html" if you want to use a template.

If you have this folder structure:

web/
    index.md
    rigid.template.html
    projects/
        one.md
        two.md

This new folder will be created when you run rigid:

web.rigid/
    index.html
    projects/
        one.html
        two.html

It's that simple.

Source code for this blog is a good example and can give you some hints on how to use multiple templates: https://github.com/atmoz/blog

Template

You have a small selection of placeholders to choose from: %TITLE%, %CONTENT%, %DATE% and %INDEX%.

%TITLE%

Title is determined by your first level 1 header.

%CONTENT%

The content of your markdown file, converted to HTML by md2html.awk.

%DATE%

Date when file was created, in the format YYYY-MM-DD (changing format will be available later). This is tricky, as you can not get this date from the filesystem. Only date of last modification is accessible. That's why I added git support. Rigid uses the date when you added the file to the repository. If that fails, last modification date is used as a fallback.

%INDEX%

Builds a list of all HTML files in the format <li><a href="path">title</a></li>.

I added some optional options so you can sort and filter:

%INDEX(/ ^post/ date -r)%
       |   |     |   |
       |   |     |   `– argument given to sort (man sort)
       |   |     `– – – sort by: "date" or "name"
       |   `– – – – – – regex filter (grep)
       `– – – – – – – – path prefix ("null" for no prefix)

Using placeholder without parameters (%INDEX%) is the same as using %INDEX(null .* name)%.

Multiple templates

You can use multiple templates! You can have one main template in root, and add more flesh on the bone as you go deeper down the folder structure.

Example: I wanted to use the disqus comment system only on my blog posts, so I added the JS code in a template file under my post folder. That's why my index file don't have comments.

Git hooks for easy publishing

Use Git magic to publish your new content!

vim page.md
git add page.md
git commit && git push

.git/hooks/post-receive on remote:

git checkout -f
rigid /path/to/worktree /path/to/public_html