Jssg: Java Static Site Generator

Jssg is a simple static site generator like Jekyll, but with less features and written in Java. The concept behind is the same as all static site generators. The program takes a directory containing blog posts and site pages written in either Markdown or Textile, and merge the generated markup in a complete set of HTML files using Freemarker. Then the site can be easily put on any web server, or even on GitHub.

Getting Started

Install Jssg

To get a copy of jssg just clone the git repository and mvn package.

$ git clone git://github.com/agrison/jssg.git
$ cd jssg
$ mvn package
-- add jsgg to your $PATH

Init

To create a default site structure, just call jssg -init.

$ mkdir myblog
$ cd myblog
$ jssg -init

After the init command has finish to run, you should have the following structure:

+ _layout/
|--+ index.html
|--+ blog.html
+ _posts/
|--+ yyyy-MM-dd-Hello.markdown
|--+ 2011-11-20-Unix-Prompt.markdown
+ index.textile
+ config.properties

You can edit some of the properties in the config.properties file, for instance the path to pygments.

A default index page content is written in the index.textile file, and its layout is written in _layout/index.html.
A default blog post is written in the _posts/yyyy-MM-dd-Hello.mkd file, and its layout is written in _layout/blog.html.

Write content

With the jssg -init command you have already a default index page and a first blog post, but you can add more if you want.

$ cat <<EOF > _posts/2011-10-29-Hello.mkd
---
title: Hello
layout: blog
description: Welcome
date: 2011-10-29
comments: true
url: /2011/10/29/Hello
---

Hello
==============
Welcome to my blog.
EOF

Write an about page.

$ cat <<EOF > about.textile
---
title: My awesome webpage
layout: index
description: About page
---

h2. About

I'm what's up New York.

Create your layout

If you need to customize the layouts, the files are located in _layouts, below are two commands that shows what are the defaults bundled in the sample.

$ cat <<EOF > _layout/blog.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
   <head>
      <title>${header['title']}</title>
   </head>
   <body>
       <div class="content">
           <span>${header['date']?date?string.medium}</span>

           ${content}

           <#if header['comments']??>
           <div id="comments">
               <div id="disqus_thread"></div>
               <script type="text/javascript">
                 var disqus_shortname = '***';
                 var disqus_identifier = '/blog/${header['title']}';
                 var disqus_url = 'http://www.foo.com${header['url']}';
                 var disqus_developer = 1;
                 (function() {
                     var dsq = document.createElement('script'); dsq.type = 'text/javascript'; dsq.async = true;
                     dsq.src = 'http://' + disqus_shortname + '.disqus.com/embed.js';
                     (document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(dsq);
                 })();
               </script>
               <noscript>Please enable JavaScript to view the <a href="http://disqus.com/?ref_noscript">comments powered by Disqus.</a></noscript>
           </div>
           </#if>
       </div>
    </body>
</html>

Create the index page:

$ cat <<EOF > _layout/index.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
   <head>
      <title>Welcome to my website</title>
   </head>
   <body>
      <div class="content">
          ${content}

         <h2>Blog posts</h2>
         <ul>
         <#assign blogPosts = posts?sort_by("date")>
         <#foreach post in blogPosts?reverse>
            <li><span class="date">${post.date?date?string.medium}</span> &mdash; <a href="${post.url}">${post.title}</a></li>
         </#foreach>
         </ul>
      </div>
    </body>
</html>

Run jssg

Run the command jssg -build -serve to generate the whole site, then browse the site.

$ jssg -build -serve
      .--.
    .--,`|   .--.--.      .--.--.      ,----._,.
    |  |.   /  /    '    /  /    '    /   /  ' /
    '--`_  |  :  /`./   |  :  /`./   |   :     |
    ,--,'| |  :  ;_     |  :  ;_     |   | .\  .
    |  | '  \  \    `.   \  \    `.  .   ; ';  |
    :  | |   `----.   \   `----.   \ '   .   . |
  __|  : '  /  /`--'  /  /  /`--'  /  `---`-'| |
.'__/\_: | '--'.     /  '--'.     /   .'__/\_: |
|   :    :   `--'---'     `--'---'    |   :    :
 \   \  /                              \   \  /
  `--`-'                                `--`-'

Looking for posts in _posts/
  About to process 1 file
    + Processing 2011-10-29-Hello.markdown...

Looking for pages in ./
  About to process 1 file
    + Processing index.textile...

Site generated in 0.50 sec
Starting the Jetty server at http://localhost:9876 ...

$ curl http://localhost:9876/2011/10/29/Hello | grep Hello
<title>Hello</title>
     <h1 id="hello">Hello</h1>
           var disqus_identifier = '/blog/Hello';
           var disqus_url = 'http://www.foo.com/2011/10/29/Hello';

$ curl http://localhost:9876 | grep personal
<p>Welcome to my personal web site. You will find some great stuff here.</p>

$ open http://localhost:9876

When you run jssg with the -serve argument, it rebuilds any post or static page that you modify when it notices it, so that you just have to refresh your browser.

How it works

Invoking jssg -build will build the website by doing specific tasks:

Scan the _posts/ directory for each file having the pattern yyyy-MM-dd-something.(mkd|markdown|textile)
- Detect code snippets (if any)
- Generate the HTML markup equivalent for the Markdown or Textile file content
- Highlight code snippets with (Jygments / Pygments)
- Merge the HTML into the layout found in the _layout/ directory using Freemarker
- Write the whole content in _build/yyyy/MM/dd/something
Scan the current directory for each file having the mkd|markdown|textile extension
- Do exactly the same as above
Copy everything that is in the current directory that has not already been processed into the _build/ directory.

All these tasks are being executed automatically and takes just seconds.

Dependencies

Jssg supports code snippets higlighting through Pygments, so it should be in your PATH or you may set the path to it in the config.properties file.

Jssg is packaged as only one big fat JAR which includes all its dependencies. These dependencies are resolved through Maven or via the libs directory bundled with the source code:

Spring
Google Guava
Markdown4J
Textile4j
Freemarker
SnakeYaml
Jsoup
Jygments
Logback
Args4j
Jetty

Todos

Refactoring of external formatters, to generate multiple outputs like LaTeX, PDF through Flying Saucer, ...
More features
Less bugs.

Cheap and reliable Node.js hosting starts at $3/month, and $1/month static HTML hosting

agrison / jssg

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