This extension is under active development. Features and internal APIs may change. Do not rely on it for long-term or production workflows yet.
Summersmith is a simple yet flexible static site generator. It takes contents (markdown, less, scripts, etc), transforms them using plugins and outputs a static website (html, css, images, etc) that you can host anywhere.
It ships with plugins for markdown and pug templates, if you need something else check the plugin listing or write your own!
- Project site
- API Documentation
- Wiki
- stackoverflow tag
- IRC - #summersmith on freenode
First install summersmith using npm:
$ npm install summersmith -gThis will install summersmith globally on your system so that you can access the summersmith command from anywhere. Once that is complete run:
$ summersmith new <path>Where <path> is the location you want the site to be generated. This creates a skeleton site with a basic set of templates and some articles, while not strictly needed it's a good starting point.
If the template has a package.json (e.g. the blog template), run npm install in the new directory to install its dependencies. Summersmith no longer runs npm programmatically (npm's programmatic API was removed in npm v8).
Now enter the directory and start the preview server:
$ cd <path>
$ npm install # if the template has a package.json
$ summersmith previewAt this point you are ready to start customizing your site. Point your browser to http://localhost:8080 and start editing templates and articles.
When done run:
$ summersmith buildThis generates your site and places it in the build/ directory - all ready to be copied to your web server!
The summersmith plugin install <name> command installs plugins by running the npm CLI (npm install --save <package>). Your system's npm must be available on the command line.
And remember to give the old --help a look :-)
A summersmith site is built up of three main components: contents, views and templates.
Contents is a directory where all the sites raw material goes (markdown files, images, javascript etc). This directory is then scanned to produce what's internally called a ContentTree.
The ContentTree is a nested object built up of ContentPlugins and looks something like this:
{
"myfile.md": {MarkdownPlugin} // plugin instance, subclass of ContentPlugin
"some-dir/": { // another ContentTree instance
"image.jpg": {StaticPlugin}
"random.file": {StaticPlugin}
}
}This content tree is provided in full to the views when rendering. This gives you a lot of flexibility when writing plugins, you could for example write a plugin that generates a mosaic using images located in a specific directory.
Summersmith comes with a default Page plugin that renders markdown content using templates. This plugin takes markdown (combined with some metadata, more on this later) compiles it and provides it to a template along with the content tree and some utility functions.
This brings us to the second component, the template directory. All templates found in this directory are loaded and are also passed to the content plugins when rendering.
By default only .pug templates are loaded, but you can easily add template plugins to use a template engine of your choosing.
Check the examples/ directory for some inspiration on how you can use summersmith or the showcase to see what others are doing.
Configuration can be done with command-line options, a config file or both. The config file will be looked for as config.json in the root of your site (you can set a custom path using --config).
| Name | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| contents | ./contents |
contents directory location |
| templates | ./templates |
templates directory location |
| views | null |
views directory location, optional |
| locals | {} |
global site variables, can also be a path to a json file |
| require | {} |
modules to load and add to locals. e.g. if you want underscore as _ you would say {"_": "underscore"} |
| plugins | [] |
list of plugins to load |
| ignore | [] |
list of files or pattern to ignore |
| output | ./build |
output directory, this is where the generated site is output when building |
| filenameTemplate | :file.html |
outputs filenames and paths according to a template. (documentation) |
| introCutoffs | ['<span class="more', '<h2', '<hr'] |
list of strings to search for when determining if a page has an intro |
| baseUrl | / |
base url that site lives on, e.g. /blog/. |
| hostname | null |
hostname to bind preview server to, null = INADDR_ANY |
| port | 8080 |
port preview server listens on |
All paths can either be relative or absolute. Relative paths will be resolved from the working directory or --chdir if set.
ContentPlugins transform content, each item in the content tree is represented by a ContentPlugin instance. Content plugins can be created from files matching a glob pattern or by generators.
The ContentPlugin class is that all content plugins inherit from. Subclasses have to implement the getFilename and getView instance methods and the fromFile class method - more info in the plugin guide.
All content plugins have the following properties (a property in summersmith is simply a shortcut to a getter. i.e. item.filename is the same as calling item.getFilename())
| Property | Getter signature | Description |
|---|---|---|
| filename | getFilename() |
filename content will be rendered to |
| view | getView() |
function used to render the plugin, e.g. the page plugin uses a view that passes the plugin and locals to a template |
| url | getUrl(base) |
url for the content. base is from where this url will be resolved and defaults to config.baseUrl. for example you can call content.getUrl('http://myiste.com') to get a permalink to that content |
Summersmith ships with a page plugin. This plugin is what the markdown page and many other content plugins build upon.
The Page model (inherits from ContentPlugin)
Properties:
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| metadata | object containing the pages metadata |
| title | metadata.title or Untitled |
| date | Date object created from metadata.date if set, unix epoch time if not |
| rfc822date | a rfc-822 formatted string made from date |
| body | markdown source |
| html | parsed markdown as html |
A MarkdownPage is either a markdown file with metadata on top or a json file located in the contents directory.
---
title: My first post
date: 2012-12-12 12:12
author: John Hjort <foo@bar.com>
template: article.pug
----
# Hello friends!
Life is wonderful, isn't it?
or use json to simply pass metadata to a template:
{
"template": "template.pug",
"stuff": {
"things": 123,
"moar": [1, 2, 3]
}
}Pages are by default rendered using the template view. This view passes the page to the template provided in the metadata. Omitting the template key or setting it to none will cause the page not to be rendered.
All relative links in the markdown will be resolved correctly when rendering. This means you can just place image.png in the same directory and simply include it in your markdown as 
This is especially convenient when using a markdown editor (read Mou if you're on a mac).
Metadata is parsed using js-yaml and will be accessible in the template as page.metadata.
There are two special metadata keys, The first one is template which specifies what template to render the page with. If the key is omitted or set to none the page will not be rendered (but still available in the content tree).
The second one is filename which can be used to override the output filename of the page. See filename templating for advanced usage.
When a page is rendered to a template the page instance is available as page in the template context. The content tree is also available as contents and config.locals is the root object.
A plugin is a function that's called with the summersmith environment and a callback.
Plugins are loaded by adding a "require id" to config.plugins. This can be a path, local- or global module.
It works just like you would expect a require() call to.
Plugin example:
fs = require 'fs'
module.exports = (env, callback) ->
class SimonSays extends env.ContentPlugin
constructor: (@filepath, text) ->
@text = "Simon says: #{ text }"
getFilename: -> @filepath.relative # relative to content directory
getView: -> (env, locals, contents, templates, callback) ->
callback null, new Buffer @text
SimonSays.fromFile = (filepath, callback) ->
fs.readFile filepath.full, (error, buffer) ->
if error
callback error
else
callback null, new SimonSays filepath, buffer.toString()
env.registerContentPlugin 'text', '**/*.txt', SimonSays
callback() # tell the plugin manager we are doneSee the plugin guide for more info.
example:
var summersmith = require('summersmith');
// create the sites environment, can also be called with a config object. e.g.
// {contents: '/some/contents', locals: {powerLevel: 10}}, ..}
var env = summersmith('/path/to/my/config.json');
// build site
env.build(function(error) {
if (error) throw error;
console.log('Done!');
});
// preview
env.preview(function(error, server) {
if (error) throw error;
console.log('Server running!');
});
// do something with the content tree
env.load(function(error, result) {
if (error) throw error;
console.log('Contents loaded!');
});Check the source or api docs for a full list of methods.
To run a development build use the ./bin/dev/cli command. The chdir -C <path> flag is handy for pointing it to a test project to experiment with.
Summersmith was written by Bernard Debecker and licensed under the MIT-license.
The name is a nod to Johan Nordberg's Wintersmith and blacksmith which inspired this project.