Static Site Generator

A markdown-to-HTML static site generator built in Python, created as part of the Boot.dev backend development course.

What It Does

Takes a directory of markdown files and converts them into a fully functional static website. You write your content in markdown, run the generator, and it outputs clean HTML pages ready to serve — or in this case, deploy to GitHub Pages.

Live site: https://oaftobar.github.io/staticSite/

How It Works

The generator is built in layers, each one building on the last:

1. Inline markdown parsing — converts raw text into TextNode objects, handling bold, italic, code, links, and images
2. HTML node tree — a LeafNode and ParentNode class system that represents HTML as a tree before rendering it to a string
3. Block markdown parsing — splits a full markdown document into blocks (paragraphs, headings, code blocks, quotes, lists) and determines the type of each
4. Page generation — reads markdown files, converts them to HTML, injects them into an HTML template, and writes the output
5. Recursive file handling — copies static assets and generates pages for every markdown file found in the content directory

Running It Locally

./main.sh

Then open http://localhost:8888 in your browser.

Building for Production

./build.sh

This generates the site into the docs/ directory with the correct base path for GitHub Pages.

Project Structure

content/        # Markdown source files
static/         # Static assets (CSS, images)
docs/           # Generated site output (committed for GitHub Pages)
src/            # Python source code
template.html   # HTML template with {{ Title }} and {{ Content }} placeholders

What I Learned

This was my first real Python project of this scale. Coming in, I understood the basics but struggled with a lot of the details.

Things that tripped me up:

• Class inheritance and super().__init__() — I kept passing self manually and mixing up positional vs keyword arguments until it finally clicked
• Indentation errors were a constant battle, especially as files got longer
• Circular imports — I didn't know this was even a thing until I almost created one between textnode.py and inline_markdown.py
• Recursive functions — the split_nodes_image function in particular took a while to get right, specifically tracking the "remaining" text after each image was extracted
• Git — I didn't commit throughout the project and had to set everything up at the end, which was its own adventure

Things I got better at:

• Knowing when to create a new file vs. add to an existing one
• Python list comprehensions — by the end I was writing them naturally
• Reading error messages and tracing them back to the actual problem
• Thinking about where functions belong based on their imports and dependencies

Built With

• Python 3
• Zero external dependencies — just the standard library