Ipsen

A static site generator that aims to be simple and powerful.

⚠ this documentation is very limited while more testing is going on. More comprehensive documentation will be available when Ipsen is closer to a production release.

Installation

pnpm add @axel669/ipsen@0.4.1

Usage

Ipsen uses a .ipsen folder in project root to determine configuration and other things (see below).

npx ipsen

Or in package.json

{
  ...,
  "scripts": {
    "render-docs": "ipsen"
  },
  ...
}

That's really it. All the configuration and custom files are read from the .ipsen folder.

.ipsen Folder

The config.yml file is the only file required by ipsen. The other folders are optional, and only used when rendering from custom templates/parsers.

project
    .ipsen
        config.yml
        parser
        static
        template
            code.html
            page.html
            vars.json
            static
            <other template files>
    <project files>

config.yml

# The source markdown file that lists the contents of the site.
source: site.md
# The folder to save the generated files into.
dest: site
# Custom parsers for loading data out of files and into marked areas to make api
# documentation easier, and allowing the api docs to stay in the code files.
# Parsers starting with "@" will be loaded from the parsers available in Ipsen.
# Each extension needs to be configured individually even if they use the same
# parser.
parsers:
  mjs: "@js"
  js: "@js"
  cjs: "@js"
  py: "@py"
  yaml: "@yaml"
  json: "@json"
# The name of the template to use for generating the site. Names starting with
# "@" will resolve to the templates provided by ipsen, any other name will be
# resolved in the .ipsen/template folder in the project.
# The template will always load the page.html file from the template folder and
# use it to render the pages of the site.
template: "@basic"
# extra options available to the template as $.options. Any type of value allowed.
options:
  theme: dark

The .ipsen folder and the source/dest options of the config are relative to the cwd where Ipsen is being run.

source (site.md)

The source file should be a markdown file and list the contents of the site that need to be rendered. It will also serve to build the sidebar menu for site navigation. Links will determine which files are rendered (and their titles), and text can be used to name any section of files in the list without rendering content at that point.

Only one link should be outside of a list, and it will be used as the index file for the site. All files except the index will generate an html file of the same name with the extension changed. The index file will always be saved as index.html to allow standard website configurations to play nice with the rendered content.

The link targets can optionally have a hash that says which file within the template should be used to render the page, defaults to page.html.

[Home](readme.md)

- Python Stuff
    - [Test](py-stuff/test.md#thing.html)

Currently Ipsen assumes the static site will be at the root of the domain it's hosted at, so all paths are /<file> within the html to make sure that any file can link to any othe file without needing to calculate the relative path between every file and every other file in the output.

Parsers

Need something here for docs.

Static Folder

If there is a static folder in the .ipsen folder, the files will be copied to the output directory when the site is rendered.

Template Folder

The template folder within the .ipsen folder can have a number of files that will be used by the Burger Template engine within ipsen to generate the pages for the static site. Ipsen also has a @basic template available that can be used, or copied and modified for further customization.

Details for the Buger Template syntax can be found in the page about the templates accesible from the sidebar menu.

page.html

The default file that ipsen will look for when rendering a page.

code.html

When a code block is rendered, Ipsen will look for this file in the template and use it to render the syntax highlighted html for the code. The basic template uses this file to add a copy button to quickly copy code. If this file is not found, Ipsen will just render the highlighted code with no extra controls or other modifications.

vars.json

A json file that can have any number of variables available to templates as $.vars. Ipsen does not read the contents of this file for anything it does on its own, so it can have any format the template wants.

Extending Templates

Templates can be extended by putting a file named .extend inside the root of the template folder. The file should contain the name of the template to be extended, and follows the same rules for the name as the config file. Ipsen will collect the list of files from each template and merge them into a single list where templates later in a chain have priority, effectively overriding any files if they share a name. An extending template can override any file provided by they extend, including ones like page.html and code.html.

The vars.json file will also be loaded from all templates in a chain, with the later variables overriding the earlier ones.

// Example: custom template extends @basic template

// custom template files
[
  "page.html",
  "new-thing.html"
]
// @basic template files
[
  "page.html",
  "sidebar.html"
]

// resolved mapping
{
  // custom overrides the template before it
  "page.html": "custom/page.html",
  // no previous entry, file is just added as another entry
  "new-thing": "custom/new-thing.html",
  // no entry overriding the built-in file, added as another entry
  "sidebar.html": "@basic/sidebar.html"
}