Unstatic

Unstatic means to be a static-site-generator generator (really a generator of generators of sites that can be static, semi-static, or dynamic).

Getting Started

1. Set-up a simple project

We'll use a giter8 template. Any giter8-compatible tool would work (g8, mill init, sbt new).

% sbt new swaldman/unstatic-seed.g8
[info] welcome to sbt 1.8.2 (Oracle Corporation Java 17.0.5)
[info] loading settings for project global-plugins from dependency-graph.sbt,gpg.sbt,metals.sbt ...
[info] loading global plugins from /Users/swaldman/.sbt/1.0/plugins
[info] set current project to new (in build file:/private/var/folders/by/35mx6ty94jng67n4kh2ps9tc0000gn/T/sbt_898e9db1/new/)
name [Unstatic Example]: mysite.com
module [mysite.com]: mysite
package [example]: com.mysite
untemplate_version [0.0.4]: 
mill_version [0.10.11]: 

Template applied in /Users/swaldman/mysite.com

2. Check out default site in development mode

Start the development server:

% cd mysite.com
% ./mysite-site-devcycle.sh 
Compiling /Users/swaldman/Dropbox/BaseFolders/development-why/gitproj/mysite.com/buildCompilationSettings.sc
Compiling /Users/swaldman/Dropbox/BaseFolders/development-why/gitproj/mysite.com/build.sc
[38/53] mysite.compile 
[info] compiling 3 Scala sources to /Users/swaldman/Dropbox/BaseFolders/development-why/gitproj/mysite.com/out/mysite/compile.dest/classes ...
[info] done compiling
[53/53] mysite.runBackground 
Watching for changes to 6 paths... (Enter to re-run, Ctrl-C to exit)
Endpoints to serve:
  - GET / -> -/status code (301) {header Location: /index.html}
  - GET /index.html -> {body as text/plain (UTF-8)}/{header Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8} {body as text/html (UTF-8)}
  - GET /* {header If-None-Match} {header If-Modified-Since} {header Range} {header Accept-Encoding} -> one of(status code (404)|status code (400)|status code (416))/one of(status code (304)|status code (206) {header Last-Modified} {header Content-Length} {header Content-Type} {header ETag} {header Accept-Ranges} {header Content-Range} {body as application/octet-stream}|status code (200) {header Last-Modified} {header Content-Length} {header Content-Type} {header ETag} {header Content-Encoding} {body as application/octet-stream})
Beginning HTTP Service on port 8999.

Then, open a browser on http://localhost:8999/

You should see a "Hello World!" site!

3. Generate as a static site

Run...

% ./mysite-site-gen.sh 
[52/52] mysite.run 
Endpoints generated:
 ➣ /index.html
Endpoints copied from static locations:
 ➣ / <- mysite/static

You will see a directory called public appear in your directory. That is your static site! Open a browser on a file URL to index.html in that directory. On a Mac...

% open public/index.html

You should see exactly the site you saw from the development server!

4. Edit the site

The default site definition is a Scala object, which you'll find at mysite/src/com/mysite/MysiteSite.scala:

package com.mysite

import ... // imports removed for brevity

object MysiteSite extends ZTSite.SingleRootComposite( JPath.of("mysite/static") ):

  // edit this to where your site will actually be served!
  override val serverUrl : Abs    = Abs("https://www.example.com/")
  override val basePath  : Rooted = Rooted.root

  // customize this to what the layout you want requires!
  case class MainLayoutInput( renderLocation : SiteLocation, mbTitle : Option[String], mainContentHtml : String )

  // get rid of this -- modify it into something useful and/or include something like a SimpleBlog defined as a singleton object
  object HelloWorldPage extends ZTEndpointBinding.Source:
    val location = MysiteSite.location("/index.html")
    val task = zio.ZIO.attempt {
      layout_main_html( MainLayoutInput( location, Some("Hello"),  "<h1>Hello World!</h1>" ) ).text
    }
    val endpointBindings = ZTEndpointBinding.publicReadOnlyHtml( location, task, None, immutable.Set("hello-world") ) :: Nil
  end HelloWorldPage

  // avoid conflicts, but early items in the lists take precedence over later items
  override val endpointBindingSources : immutable.Seq[ZTEndpointBinding.Source] = immutable.Seq( HelloWorldPage )

object MysiteSiteGenerator extends ZTMain(MysiteSite, "mysite-site")

Each element of endpointBindingSources defines a Seq of pages that will be generated as endpointBindings. A factory method of ZTEndpointBinding.scala specify the location, relative to site root (which need not be the server root, you can alter basePath), a ZIO Task that generates the contents. Each binding gets a set of identifiers, which become IDs by which you can identify the endpoint (e.g. for links) if they are kept unique.

The HTML is generated by an untemplate, which is a text-file-ish shorthand for generating a top-level Scala function. Unlike most template libraries that try to be an abstraction above programming languages, an untemplate really is transparently just a specialized way to write Scala. You might see a lot of Scala in them!

The untemplate invoked to generate the default site is available as mysite/untemplate/com/mysite/layout-main.html.untemplate.

Here are some things to try:

1. Restart the development server and check out the site at http://localhost:8999/.

   % ./mysite-site-devcycle.sh

2. Edit something!

   • Change the title from Some("Hello") to something else
   • Edit the HTML in mysite/untemplate/com/mysite/layout-main.html.untemplate
   • Edit the CSS in mysite/static/css/style.css (which is linked in the untemplate in a way that self-relativizes from any location in the site) After you make any change, you should be able to reload the page and see the changes. (For the CSS, you may need to <shift>-reload or whatever trick is necessary in your browser to skip the cache.)

   It may take a few seconds. If it does not reload, the changes — either to the Scala object or to the untemplate — may not have compiled! Check the command line in which you ran ./mysite-site-devcycle.sh, and look for compilation errors to correct!

5. Add a blog

Coming soon!

(If you're impatient, check out the source for drafts.interfluidity.com.)