Kisipar: An UNFINISHED (and abandoned) Markdown-centric web server for small sites.

This was a fun project and I rewrote it several times -- twice in Perl, thrice in Go, and even once in Javascript/nodejs. But in the end, I never quite got it where I wanted it, and other things solved my own problems better. These days I use Zola.

Still, there are some useful bits of code and ideas in here, so I keep it around for reference, and you are welcome to use any of it subject to the MIT LICENSE.

---

LATEST IDEAS - 10 MAY 2016

Site Layout

    config.yaml / config.json (as you prefer)
    static/
    pages/
    templates/

TheDot
    Site
        Name
        Description
        Domain
        Owner
        BaseURL
        Pageset -- all pages for the site
        Config  -- your full config; handle with care!
        StaticInfo(path) -> FileInfo
        StaticList(prefix,suffix,extension) --> []FileInfo
    Page -- the current page if applicable, not present for created index
    Pageset -- the pageset if applicable (current level down)
    Static  -- interface to lookup static files, if desired.

PAGE FINDING HIERARCHY

    1. STATIC (so you can override on disk)
    2. VIRTUAL
    3. REGULAR FULL MATCH
    4. REGULAR INDEX MATCH


STATIC ASSET HANDLING

Exact match in static dir (configurable, or "static") trumps all else,
and is never cached.  No approximate matches are attempted.

No auto-indexing of static pages, for instance.  If you want to store
things in /static and

INDEX HANDLING

Specific page trumps index, so for `/foo` a match on `/foo.md` will always
beat `/foo/index.md` and will *not* result in a Pageset automatically
present for the Dot.

    IF exact static match THEN serve that file
    ELSE IF exact md THEN serve that as Page
    ELSE IF index THEN serve that as Page with Pageset for dir
    ELSE IF dir matches THEN serve generic Index with Pageset for dir
    ELSE serve not-found

TEMPLATE SELECTION

Templates can e overridden in the config, or in the individual file's
meta.  Config overrides are either specific by cleaned URL, or general
covering a partial match; in the latter case, the most complete match
is used, i.e. `/foo/bar/baz` matches `/foo/bar` before `/foo`.
Config templates take precedence over file-meta templates.
Regexp template overrides are not (yet) supported, but might be a good
idea.

If a specified template is not found, a 500 error results.

    IF match for
    IF exact match for clean URL in config THEN use that
    ELSE IF set in file meta THEN use that
    ELSE IF partial match in config THEN use that
First: any page-specific override
First: template specified in the file, if available (500 if not).
Second: any override template specified in config
USE CASES
    /foo
    /foo/index.html

"Kisipar" is Hungarian for "Kleingewerbe," which is German for small business.

Kisipar is also an opinionated, Markdown-centric web server written in the Go language.

WORK IN PROGRESS

CAVEAT LECTOR! This is a work in early progress and may change radically at any moment. Do not try to use it before it at least reaches version 1.0. Thank you.

CURRENT VERSION: 0.0.0 (i.e. just getting started here folks...)

NOTE: now a private repo until it does something useful (but it might go public before 1.0.0, just not while it's this embarrassingly raw).

Motivation

I want an off-the-shelf web server for my content-based projects, with a minimum of configuration required for the simplest use cases. I want it to be easily expandable to handle more complicated sites. I want the textual content itself to be written in Markdown.

Since others might reasonably want the same thing, let's make it an Open Source project!

Goals

• Zero-config serving of simple sites.
  • kisipar /path/to/your/site
• High performance.
• Minimum number of dependencies outside the standard library.
• Easy/obvious way to extend (in code) for new routes.
• Flexible, within reasonable use cases.
• Support multiple languages.
• Placeholder sites just run the binary w/ cli args for config.
• Basic "real" sites just run the binary but w/various customizations.
• More complicated sites import "kisipar" and go from there.

Stretc (or 2.0) Goals

• Run multiple sites from one executable.
• Sane multilingual options.
• SSL (normally you'd let Nginx do this for you).

NOTES TO SELF

• Caching rendered content defeats the purpose of greater control in templates.
  • You can't cache the request object, and it may be meaningful.
  • If you want real caching for performance reasons then do it in Nginx etc.
• Follow blackfriday example for packaging: https://github.com/russross/blackfriday
  • Except we want an executable, so I guess it needs a main package.
• https://travis-ci.org
• docopt in main
• vendor in deps or what?
• frosted markdown as option (once ready); otherwise just regular
  • then extract title via node parsing or what?
  • first line is title?
• what to do for config?
• Use the executable, or fork and customize
• What about using one instance of kisipar to serve a bunch of sites?
  • Shared static content for example...

Features

• Content can be Markdown, text, or HTML.
• Content is rendered in the browser.
• Uses Frosted Markdown for defining metadata.
• Templates are used.
• Zero config option: can use command-line or env.
• Contact Form available (simple mail sender).
  • Or not? Security risk?
• MAYBE SSL?

Site Layout:

config.toml
templates/
    wrapper.html
    ...anything else you want, it's within the templates...
static/
    js/
    css/

    (anything)
content/

Order of checking:

1. static (trumps all else; not cached)
2. cached, rendered (respect TTL)
3. content directory: md,txt,html as fragments; others served straight.
4. special URLs, eg "contact" and "rss"

Anything not found this way is 404.