fantail is (yet another) static site generator written in pure-Python.
It is fast, extensible and requires zero configuration to use.
There are many different static site generators available to use. Not all of them do a particularly good job, or contain features that detract from the simple goal of generating a static website.
fantail aims to change that by providing a simple, minimal site generator in pure-Python. It requires no configuration or complex setup: simply point it at a directory (the "site" source), add some content and 3 commands will have a static site generated ready to upload to your favourite hosting site.
It is extensible through the use of plugins that can be used to extend the default functionality:
- a [Markdown filter][https://github.com/sjkingo/fantail/blob/master/fantail/plugins/plugin_markdown.py]
- Fast, efficient generation of static pages
- No database required
- Minimal dependencies
- Full test suite
- Extensible through plugins
- Markdown support (optional)
- Python 3.4 or 3.5
jinja2- Optional:
mistuneif you want to enable Markdown support
Installation is as simple as installing with pip:
$ pip install -e git+https://github.com/sjkingo/fantail.git
It is recommended (but not required) you install the mistune library to
provide Markdown support:
$ pip install mistune
A full test suite is provided with 100% coverage:
$ pip install tox
$ tox
This script will attempt to install the test requirements if needed.
-
$ fantail init- this will create a new site directory calledfantail-sitein the current directory and populate it with some folders and files. -
Add some pages to the
fantail-site/pagesdirectory. For more information on how to format these pages, see the Page design section, below. -
(Optionally) edit the templates in
fantail-site/templates. A minimal HTML5 template is provided to get you started, and will be used by default if you do not specify a per-page template. -
Run
$ fantail buildand your pages will be parsed and a static site will be generated.
You may run fantail build each time you modify a page or template and it will
re-generate the site. If an error occurs during generation, a message will
be printed and any existing output (from a previous run) will not be lost -
only once the site is successfully generated is it copied over to the output
directory.
See this gist for an example session.
A fantail site is made up of input pages that reside in the site's pages
directory. Each page represents a single page on the site and must end with
the .txt extension to be recognised.
Each file is split into two sections: the headers, and the content. Similar to an RFC2822-formatted email message, there is one header per line, separated by a colon, like so:
title: This is the title of this page
There must not be a blank line between headers, as a blank line signifies the end of the headers and the beginning of the content, like so:
title: Happy Days
template: blog.html
This is the page's content that will be rendered.
All headers will be added to the template context when generating, so you may add as many different headers as you would like. See the Templating section for more information.
The only header required for successful parsing of a page is title: this is
used as the <title> of the resulting page. It is also used in the RSS/Atom
generation.
template
The template header may be used to control which template file is used to
render the current page. By default if this header is missing, the base.html
template is used. An error is raised if the specified template cannot be found.
More information on the templates is available in the Templating section.
fantail uses jinja2 to generate its output and makes full use of its template
system. Templates live in the templates directory inside a site, and the
template loader will look inside here when running.
All features of jinja2's templating language can be used. For more information
see the excellent templating documentation.
See the plugins documentation for more information.