a tiny nodejs blog server

This project serves blog posts using the built-in http module provided by the NodeJS standard library. In addition, it parses markdown files to provide page styling and supports a tags for organizing posts. Strlog uses its own github repository as a content repository. When setup with a CI pipeline, publishing a post is as simple as pushing a git commit.

hosting your own copy:

• Pull a release from the release branch. This branch is updated with features but purged of my own personal posts.
• Unzip the archive.
• Navigate to the root directory and run npm start. The server will default to port 5000. Unit tests can be run with npm test.

roadmap

1. update or remove tests
2. refactor: better interface between server.js and format.js
3. refactor: pack globals into object
4. refactor: better text replace method in format.js
5. full markdown parsing

a caveat

Markdown parsing is an audacious claim for what is really just a series of regex string manipulations. It is not possible to fully cover the mardown spec this way because it is not context-aware. Sufficiently complex Markdown will break the "parser". Someday I'd love to take the time to write a real one.

layout

The repository contains the following important directories:

• ./posts: holds directories titled with the date in ISO 8601 format representing a single blog post each. Two files are required:
  • A Markdown file called post.md.
  • A JSON file with three attributes: the post name, title, and an array of topics which may be empty.
  • Additionally, you may add any resources, such as photos, to this directory.
  • A special directory called "about" holds the content for the about page.
• resources: holds template html files, the favicon, an icon for link embeds, and the CSS file.
• src: source code, split roughly into routing / file reading (server.js) and markdown parsing / html building (format.js).
• test: holds the unit tests.