Awesome

gnrt - lightweight, fast and extensible static site generator

About

A lightweight static site generator written in Python.

Features:

• Markdown-based content
• Frontmatter support
• Jinja2 templating
• Optional YAML-based configuration

Requirements

• Python 3.6+

Installation

pip install --upgrade gnrt

You may need to add $HOME/.local/bin to your $PATH.

Usage

gnrt

gnrt will look for an optional config.yml file in the current working directory, optional Jinja2 templates in the templates folder, markdown files in the content folder, then write the generated output files in the public folder, while respecting the content folder and sub-folders structure.

To get a list of options, use:

gnrt -h

Configuration

Configuration is stored in config.yml. Any key-value pair is allowed. These keys and their values can be used in the content and template files.

---
sitename: My awesome blog
baseurl: https://example.com
language: en
foo: bar

If the config.yml file exists, gnrt will look for the defaults and lists entries.

Defaults

This is where you define default configuration values, which can be overridden in content files.

Example:

defaults:
  template: default.j2
  markdown-extras:
    - break-on-newline
    - fenced-code-blocks
  nav: includes/nav.html
  bar: foo

Reserved keys

These keys have a specific meaning, and their values can be overridden in content files, like any other default.

• markdown-extras: allows to enable Markdown extensions, see Extras for a list of values
• template: sets the default Jinja template to be used while rendering content files

Lists

This is where lists of content are defined, allowing the generation of lists of links for instance.

Example:

lists:
  nav1:
  filter:
    key: category
    value: page
    template: nav-page.j2
  nav2:
    filter:
      key: category
      value: article
    sort: published
    reverse: true
    template: nav-article.j2
  rss:
    filter:
      key: category
      value: article
    sort: published
    reverse: true
    template: rss.j2
    target: public/rss.xml

Lists can select content through a filter, which gets a metadata key and a value to match.

They can be sorted by metadata value (e.g. a published date, an integer, ...), in forward (default) or reverse order.

During rendering, the generated content is saved in the includes folder (for caching), while the file path can be customized through the target key. This allows to generate a RSS feed for instance.

Content files

Content files have the .md extension and are stored in the content folder.

Frontmatter

Content files may have a frontmatter - i.e. structured metadata - written in YAML.

This is where default values can be overridden.

Example:

---
id: home
title: Home
link: /
nav-order: 3
---

Reserved keys

• id: the current item identifier, which can be used in any content file to access this item's metadata
• link: URL of the generated page
• target: path of the generated file
• title: title of the current item

Body

Content body is written in Markdown.

It may also contain Jinja2 syntax and placeholders, allowing injection of dataset values, such as links to other pages:

Check the [about]({{ data.about.link }}) page or read the [articles]({{ data.articles.link }})!

Example

See the example website in docs/example, which you can generate by installing gnrt, cloning this repository, moving to gnrt/docs/example and executing gnrt.

You can then browse it at http://localhost:8080/ by moving to the generated public folder and executing python3 -m http.server 8080.

You may also want to check a live gnrt-generated blog and read this article about gnrt.