snekkja-rs

A lightweight static HTML/CSS/JS image gallery generator (Rust version).

snekkja's operation and output are both simple: It reads through the image files in the current directory and generates the appropriate files (HTML, CSS, JS) to make the current directory a gallery.

Build

As your target execution environment for this program is undoubtedly a web server, you should probably build it for the musl target:

cargo build --release --target x86_64-unknown-linux-musl

and strip the debug symbols:

strip target/x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/release/snekkja

This is now a self-contained standalone binary that has all the info it needs baked in. Install it in your web server user account's $PATH somewhere.

Use

Place your image files in a directory accessible from the outside world, and run:

snekkja

It will generate four files in that directory:

• index.html
• snekkja.css
• snekkja.js
• data.js
• prev.svg
• next.svg

which will present those image files in a gallery when you point your web browser at that directory.

You have two options for limited customization:

snekkja -c

will generate a file config.toml in which some options can be set. Deleting any of these values from the config file will cause the default value to be used.

Also, creating a file user.css will allow you to customize CSS rules.

Captions

Captions for images in the gallery can be specified in any combination of the following three ways:

• creating a file captions.toml

The keys are filenames, the values are the captions. So something like:

"foobar.jpg" = "An image of Dennis Ritchie holding the original FOOBAR."
"gsc_logo.png" = "The proposed standardized <em>Gay Space Communism</em> logo."

• creating a file captions.json

Basically the previous file, but in JSON format.

{
    "foobar.jpg": "An image of Dennis Ritche holding the original FOOBAR.",
    "gsc_logo.png": "The proposed standardized <em>Gay Space Communism</em> logo."
}

• for a given image file, say furry_riot.webp, creating a file furry_riot.html with desired caption

Example contents of furry_riot.html:

<p>
    Furry Riots, Los Angeles, 2024
</p>
<p>
    Weary of long-standing media stigmatization, Furries
    gather in downtown Los Angeles, don their cultural
    attire, and set fire to the headquarters of the
    <em>Los Angeles Times</em>.
</p>

NOTE: Caption text is added verbatim to the HTML in the gallery document, so markup certainly works. Be careful, though, because incorrect or inappropriate markup definitely can hose the appearance and function of your page. snekkja makes no attempt to save you from yourself in this regard. When in doubt, plain text will absolutely serve.

In the case that an image has a caption specified in multiple ways, captions specified in individual HTML files will supercede those specified in captions.json which will supercede those in captions.toml.

Caveats

File names are handled internally as UTF-8 strings. I think this is okay because they are going to be embedded in a UTF-8 Javascript file and used as relative URLs. If you have a use case that requires non-UTF-8 filenames, let me know, I guess, and I'll try to figure something out.