bb-blog

For a working implementation see my blog repo.

An blogging extension for bb-server (optional) and html-builder (necessary), producing post pages, widgets, landing/latest, archive and tag pages. Pagination is added when there are more post teasers than fit on a page. Comments from Disqus can be enabled for all or per post. Also a little crud api is implemented so the blog could be managed from the site where the blog is implemented.

All posts are freely editable as files. Simple meta data (title, published, date etc) is extracted from them to produce the proper pages.

The crud interface basically implements a number of request handler functions. Bb-server is able to forward any route/method combination any function to handle. Bb-server calls these functions with the following signature, and this is what bb-blog expects: fn(req, res).

Bb-blog receives the requests and is able to save a new post, update or remove an existing post, or just render the blog.

Posts are saved on the server as files, not in a database. Bb-blog is able to render the whole blog from just the posts. It uses html-builder to actually render the site. All bb-blog does is parse all the posts in some folder, and produce a number of fragments which then are used by html-builder to put the whole site together.

So once bb-server runs, bb-blog is properly configured and the build recipes for html-builder are properly set, one command (render) to the server will build the site. By configuring the recipes and adding the right fragments to the build directory a site can be built that is more than just a blog.

Html-builder is able to take any html fragment (from disk or inline in the recipe), build more fragments out of them and then output a html file again for any of them. All bb-blog does really is create html fragments out of posts. These fragments are the posts themselves, collection pages (tag/archive/landing) and widgets (tag, recent, archive, unpublished). This means that in bb-blog’s configuration you need to specify where you want these fragments inserted. This is the from object path into the recipe (see configuration example below). You also want to specify where you want to save the resulting file. This is the to object path into the recipe. Furthermore bb-blog will add html fragments into the recipe under the names of recentWidget, archiveWidget, tagWidget and unpublishedWidget. You can use these fragments in the recipe to build other fragments.

Example configuration:

//Any of these settings can be overridden by calling the init function on this
//module and passing different values. Any values not defined are taken from
//this set of defaults
var defaults = {
    paths: {
        //Base path to directory with source files for html-builder:
        base: 'build',
        //Path where posts are saved, relative to paths.base:
        posts: 'post',
        //Path to directory served to internet:
        www: 'www',
        //Path where widgets are found, relative to www
        widgets: 'widget'
    }
    //Bb-blog saves data to the server, this limits which paths it is
    //allowed to save to. This is relative to the paths.base path.
    ,writable: ['editable', 'post']
    //Whether to check for session.data.verified === true, set to false for
    //testing purpose
    ,auth: true,
    //Number of teasers/posts per page on collection pages such as landing,
    //archive and tag.
    pagination: 3
    //Recent, archive and tag widget
    //You would set save to true if you want to pull these widgets in ajax calls
    //to build a page dynamically on the client, they get saved to path set in
    //paths above, max refers to number blog titles listed in a widget
    ,widgets: {
        recent: { max: 3, save: false } ,archive: { save: false } ,tag: { max: 3 }
    }
    //If set to true, whether comments are enabled are decided per post,
    //depending on what the setting is in the post's metadata. 
    ,enableCommentsPerPost: true
    //Global comment setting, only effective if previous setting is set to
    //false, set both to false to disable comments altogether
    ,comments: true
    
    //A recipe (string) or a list of recipes used to build pages unless
    //overridden for a page in the particular pages prop below.
    ,recipe: { editable: 'recipe.js', nojs: 'recipe.js' }
    //If the previous prop is a list the following prop decides which recipe in
    //the list is used. This should be one of the keys of the previous prop.
    ,renderMode: 'editable'
    //Default path into a recipe to where bb-blog is to insert its payload
    //(post, archive/tag/landing teaser list etc), can also be overridden for
    //any particular page by adding this setting to it, eg to pages.post.from
    ,from: [ 'fromTemplate', 'mapping', 'main']
    //Default object path into a recipe to where bb-blog is to insert the out
    //path for a particular page, for instance pages.post.path gets inserted
    //here when building a post page. Can be set per page as well.
    ,to: [ 'toTemplate', 'out' ]
    //For keeping track of when first published. Can be overridden by adding
    //publishedat metadata to a post, no need to modify. TODO Maybe should be
    //removed from here..
    ,publishedat: 'publishedat.json'
    
    //Bb-blog can build collections of posts, organised by tag, year/month,
    //unpublished status and just all of them in reverse chronological order
    //(landing). Other than that it can build a page for every post as well. Set
    //any of the following to false to prevent the page(s) from being build. Or
    //assign an object specifying path to save the pages to (relative to
    //base.www) and/or a recipe to use to build the page. A full example set of
    //props is given for the archive page. All pages can also just be set to
    //true or false, or a string for a path.
    ,pages: {
        // Landing page with all teasers of posts (paginated).
        landing: true,
        // Archive pages. Teasers of posts listed by years and months. 
        archive: { path: 'archive'
                   // ,recipe: 'some archive recipe'  //or:
                   // ,recipe: { editable: 'recipe.js', nojs: 'recipe.js' }
                   // ,from: [ 'fromTemplate', 'mapping', 'main']
                   // ,to: [ 'toTemplate', 'out' ]
                 },
        // List of teasers of posts, listed by tag. 
        tag: { path: 'tag' },
        // A page with a post
        post: { path: 'post' },
        //Any unpublished posts will be added to the unpublished folder, not to
        //the post folder. Only prop that can be set is the path.
        unpublished: { path: 'unpublished' }
    }
    //NOT TESTED
    //Json of list of posts on server. Also set whether to add recalculated
    //lists. Set to false to disable producing this json. Can be used by client
    //to dynamically build a blog.
    ,json: { byTag: true, byYearMonth: true, byReverseDate: true }
};

var blog = require('bb-blog');

blog.init(defaults);

//functions that handle requests:
blog.save(req, res);
blog.new(req, res);
blog.remove(req, res);
blog.render(req, res);

save should be a POST request and expects a query parameter called path and data. The path refers to a path/file name on the server where the data should be saved. Where this is exactly is set in the configuration for bb-blog (see above)

new expects the same path parameter, but nothing more. A new post is created using the path as file name.

remove again expects a path parameter and removes the appropriate file.

All three commands will automatically re-render the site after deleting/updating/creating the right file. This also means recalculating archive, tag and landing pages, and updating relevant widgets. There are 4 widgets: tags, archive, recent and unpublished.

You can also render directly by calling this function.