ampoule.html
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1<!DOCTYPE html> 2<html lang="en"> 3<head> 4<meta charset="UTF-8"> 5<title> 6Ampoule 7</title> 8<link rel="stylesheet" href="/static/style.css"> 9<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"> 10</head> 11<body> 12<header> 13<nav> 14<ul> 15<li><a href="/">Home</a></li> 16<li><a href="/projects">Projects</a></li> 17<li><a href="/index">Index</a></li> 18<li><a href="/about">About</a></li> 19<li><a href="https://roundabout-host.com/roundabout">Roundabout-host</a></li> 20</ul> 21<ul> 22<li><a href="mailto:root@roundabout-host.com" id="mail-link">root@roundabout-host.com</a></li> 23</ul> 24</nav> 25</header> 26<main> 27 28<div class="project-title"> 29<h1> 30Ampoule 31</h1> 32<a href="https://roundabout-host.com/roundabout/ampoule" class="repository-button">Go to repository</a> 33</div> 34<p class="tags"> 35 36<a href="/index/software.html" class="tag">software</a> 37 38<a href="/index/web.html" class="tag">web</a> 39 40<a href="/index/python.html" class="tag">python</a> 41 42<a href="/index/ampoule.html" class="tag">ampoule</a> 43 44<a href="/index/jinja2.html" class="tag">jinja2</a> 45 46<a href="/index/docs.html" class="tag">docs</a> 47 48<a href="/index/gpl.html" class="tag">gpl</a> 49 50</p> 51<article class="content-area"> 52<p>Ampoule is a lightweight, simple yet flexible, static site generator written in Python. 53It uses Jinja2 for templating. This site was generated using Ampoule. 54</p><h2>Features</h2><ul><li><p><strong class="emphasis-2"><em class="emphasis-1">Extremely</em> simple and small</strong>, only a few hundred lines of code. 55</p></li><li><p><em class="emphasis-1">Only</em> depends on Jinja2, Ruamel YAML, bs4, and colorama. 56</p></li><li><p><strong class="emphasis-2">Jinja2 templating</strong> will be familiar to Flask users. Now you can use the same templates for 57both dynamic and static sites. 58</p></li><li><p>More of <strong class="emphasis-2">a framework</strong>. Sites are generated by a short <strong class="emphasis-2">Python script</strong> that you write to customise 59what <strong class="emphasis-2">pages</strong> it loads, which <strong class="emphasis-2">templates</strong> it uses, and what <strong class="emphasis-2">data</strong> it passes to them, or create 60custom <strong class="emphasis-2">filters</strong>, <strong class="emphasis-2">tests</strong> and more. 61</p></li><li><p>Supports <strong class="emphasis-2">YAML front matter</strong> for pages. It can be accessed using indexing syntax. 62</p></li><li><p><strong class="emphasis-2">Indexes</strong> can be sorted using a function, iterated and can index any directory, recursively 63or not. They can also <strong class="emphasis-2">transform URLs</strong> to make them end in ".html". 64</p></li><li><p><strong class="emphasis-2">Object-oriented</strong> design. The same objects used in that script can also be passed to the 65templates. 66</p></li><li><p>Any <strong class="emphasis-2">markup language</strong> can be used, as long as it can be converted to HTML. You just need to 67configure a filter for it. You can even mix multiple markup languages in the same site. 68</p></li><li><p>Ships with a light <strong class="emphasis-2">markdown</strong> implementation. 69</p></li><li><p>Easy to use for <strong class="emphasis-2"><em class="emphasis-1">both</em> programmers and non-programmers</strong>. While you do need a script, you can 70also use an off-the-shelf one. 71</p></li><li><p><strong class="emphasis-2">Themes</strong> can be <em class="emphasis-1">exactly how you want</em>. 72</p></li><li><p>Keeping <strong class="emphasis-2">static files</strong> is easy, because indexes can be static. 73</p></li><li><p>Static files are always <strong class="emphasis-2">binary</strong> and not templated. The same happens for files that can't be 74decoded. 75</p></li><li><p><strong class="emphasis-2">URL</strong>-based definitions. Pages are added using the URL that will be used to access them. 76</p></li><li><p>Reinforces the <strong class="emphasis-2">web</strong> as a <strong class="emphasis-2">publishing medium</strong>. Static sites are not for everyone, but if you 77want to <strong class="emphasis-2">publish</strong> something, it's the best way. 78</p></li><li><p>And GitHub will give you <strong class="emphasis-2">free hosting</strong>, because it's static and <em class="emphasis-1">very cheap to serve</em>. 79Roundabout-host now also offers free hosting for static sites and will soon offer a way to 80generate them using CI and the generator you prefer. 81</p></li><li><p>It's <strong class="emphasis-2">free software</strong> and available under the <strong class="emphasis-2">GPLv3</strong>. 82</p></li><li><p><strong class="emphasis-2">No JavaScript</strong> is required, but it can of course be used if you want. 83</p></li><li><p>Decently <strong class="emphasis-2">fast</strong>: even if you've got a huge site, it should not take more than <em class="emphasis-1">30 seconds</em>. 84Local rebuilding will also be added. And it's still much faster than any dynamic site. 85</p></li><li><p>Beautiful logging thanks to colorama. 86</p></li><li><p>Great for educational use; you can learn <strong class="emphasis-2">Python</strong>, <strong class="emphasis-2">HTML</strong>, <strong class="emphasis-2">CSS</strong>, <strong class="emphasis-2">JavaScript</strong>, 87and <strong class="emphasis-2">Jinja2</strong> all at once. 88</p></li><li><p>You can <strong class="emphasis-2">make your site</strong> in <em class="emphasis-1">an hour</em>, and then it's time to focus on writing what you want 89to publish. 90</p></li><li><p>If you see fit, it's easy to <strong class="emphasis-2">convert</strong> to a dynamic site. A <strong class="emphasis-2">Flask implementation</strong> is 91planned. 92</p></li><li><p>Clear and <strong class="emphasis-2">magic-free</strong>. You can see exactly what's happening and why. No magic, no 93configuration files, no hidden behaviour. The code is so short you can read it. 94</p></li></ul><h2>Minimal example</h2><pre data-language="python">import string 95from datetime import datetime 96import string 97 98import ampoule_ssg as ampoule 99from ampoule_ssg import markdown 100 101# Create a site object. This is where we are adding pages to. The argument is the directory 102# where the site will be built. 103site = ampoule.Site("my_site") 104 105 106# Use this as "| markdown" in Jinja2 templates to convert any Markdown source to HTML. 107@site.filter("markdown") 108def markdown_filter(text): 109return markdown.markdown2html(text) 110 111 112# Make the URLs web-friendly and make it end in ".html" so it will be correctly formatted 113# by dumb servers. 114def article_url(url): 115url = url.lower().rpartition(".")[0] 116 117new_url = "" 118for i in url: 119if i in string.ascii_lowercase: 120new_url += i 121elif i in string.whitespace: 122new_url += "-" 123 124return new_url + ".html" 125 126 127# Set context that will be passed to all templates. You can still override this. 128site.context["timestamp"] = datetime.now() 129site.context["ampoule"] = ampoule 130 131# Add the index of articles. In the template, we're looping over it to list them all. 132articles = ampoule.Index("articles", url_transform=article_url, sort_by=lambda x: x.date) 133# This makes it take all indexed files and put them under the /articles URL, keeping the 134# index's URL transformation and placing all of them in the article.html template. This 135# will be passed as "document" to the template. 136site.add_from_index(articles, "/articles", "article.html") 137 138# Create the main page which has access to the index so it can list all articles. 139main_page = ampoule.Page(site, "home.html", articles=articles) 140 141# Add the page. Note how we're binding it to a path; it will automatically be set as 142# index.html in that directory, and the URL is site-relative, not the OS root. 143site.add_page("/", main_page) 144 145# Add static files using a recursive static index. It will add all files in the static 146# directory and all its subdirectories, without putting them into templates. You could 147# still use them in templates, so you can make a photo gallery or something. 148site.add_from_index( 149# We're excluding Markdown files because we're using them as licence information 150# for when the site is distributed together with the fonts. You can exclude any 151# file you want using regex. 152ampoule.Index("static", recursive=True, exclude=r"\.md$", static=True), 153"/static", 154# There is no template, because the index is static. 155) 156 157# Makes Ampoule take all pages and put them in a directory. 158site.build() 159</pre><h2>More information</h2><h3>Name origin</h3><p>An ampoule is smaller than a flask. Because it is related to Flask (it uses Jinja2) but is 160a much smaller static version of it, the name makes sense. 161</p><h3>What about the other static site generators?</h3><p>There are many static site generators out there, but they all have their own problems. 162In particular, I haven't seen one that uses code to describe the site, rather than a 163configuration file. This makes it much more flexible and powerful. 164</p><p>Also, Ampoule is familiar to Python programmers, because it's written in Python and uses 165Jinja2, a templating engine that is also used in Flask. It's even the smallest static site 166generator: 167</p><ol><li><p>Hugo: written in Go, uses go html/template, and it has 133k lines of Go, not counting 168comments or blanks. 169</p></li><li><p>Jekyll: written in Ruby, uses Liquid, and it has 17300 lines of Ruby, not counting 170comments or blanks. Interestingly, it's got more Markdown than Ruby. 171</p></li><li><p>Gatsby: they call it a framework, and rightfully so, because it's overkill for actually 172static (i.e. for publishing content) sites, even though JS people use it for precisely that 173purpose. It's written in JavaScript, uses React, and it's git 380k lines of JavaScript and 174TypeScript combined. (For comparison, it's over 1/100 of Linux itself, which is HUGE considering 175it uses a high-level language and only has to do so much.) 176</p></li><li><p>Pelican: written in Python, uses Jinja2, and it has 12400 lines of Python, not counting 177comments or blanks. 178</p></li><li><p>Docusaurus: written in TypeScript, uses React (of course, because it's made by Facebook), 179and it has 140k lines of TypeScript and JavaScript combined. 180</p></li><li><p>VuePress: written in JavaScript, uses Vue, and it has 11k lines of JavaScript, Vue and 181TypeScript combined. 182</p></li><li><p>Zola: written in Rust, uses Tera, and it has 17k lines of Rust, not counting comments or 183blanks. Also, it's designed to be monolithic and not extensible at all. 184</p></li></ol><p>Whereas I have only got 750 lines of Python, not counting comments or blanks. Add the script 185to generate the site, and it's still under 1000 lines. 186</p><p>I don't want to criticise other static site generators, they all do some things well, but 187they're not what I want. I want a simple, small, flexible and versatile static site generator 188that is low-maintenance and easy to use. I don't know about you, but maybe you want the same 189thing. 190</p><p>The JS-based ones are particularly unsuitable for most people, because they're slow, bloated, 191hard to install, and most often actually generate an SPA, which is not what you want for a 192blog or documentation or web book or anything like that. 193</p><h3>Why generated static sites?</h3><p>If you don't want generated static sites, you've got two other options. 194</p><h4>Dynamic sites</h4><ul><li><p>bloated; 195</p></li><li><p>slow; 196</p></li><li><p>requires smart server; 197</p></li><li><p>requires maintenance; 198</p></li><li><p>requires security; 199</p></li><li><p>requires a database; 200</p></li><li><p>hard to post content; 201</p></li><li><p>databases can't be managed with git; 202</p></li><li><p>hard to import content; 203</p></li><li><p>no free hosting; 204</p></li></ul><h4>Static sites</h4><ul><li><p>hard to manage layouts; 205</p></li><li><p>hard to list the content; 206</p></li><li><p>hard to update indexes; 207</p></li><li><p>no support for metadata; 208</p></li><li><p>markup languages must be manually converted; 209</p></li></ul><p>With a <em class="emphasis-1">generated</em> static site, you get the best of both worlds. It's the best publishing 210platform, because it's just files, but it still provides the convenience of just writing 211content and having it magically appear on the site and formatted correctly. 212</p><h2>How to install</h2><p>Please note that this is not yet available on PyPI. For now you'll need to download the code 213(ideally using git) and install it with <code>pip</code> as a local package by giving it the path to the 214directory containing <code>setup.py</code>. 215</p><h2>Full documentation</h2><p>To demonstrate just how easy it is, the docs can all fit on one page. 216</p><h3>class <code>ampoule_ssg.Site</code></h3><p><code>Site</code> is the main class of Ampoule; it represents a single website. It is responsible for 217handling added pages, the template engine and features, as well as building it. 218</p><h4>def <code>__init__(self, build_dir: typing.Union[str, bytes, os.PathLike], template_dir: typing.Union[str, bytes, os.PathLike] = "templates")</code></h4><p>Create a new site object. <code>build_dir</code> is the directory where the site will be built. 219<code>template_dir</code> is the directory where the templates are stored. Both are relative to the 220script current working directory. 221</p><h4>def <code>add_page(self, location: typing.Union[str, bytes, os.PathLike], page: typing.union[Static, Page])</code></h4><p>Add a page object to the site at the server-relative URL <code>location</code>. The page object can be 222either a <code>Static</code> or a <code>Page</code>. 223</p><h4>def <code>add_from_index(self, index: Index, location: typing.Union[str, bytes, os.PathLike], template: str = None, **kwargs)</code></h4><p>Add all pages from an index to the site with the root at the server-relative URL <code>location</code>. 224The pages will be rendered with the template <code>template</code> and the context <code>kwargs</code>. will be 225passed to all of them. If the index is static, the pages will not be rendered with a template, 226but rather copied as-is. 227</p><p>For each page, the <code>document</code> object found in the index will be passed to the template under 228that name. 229</p><h4>def <code>filter(self, name: str)</code></h4><p>A decorator that registers a filter function with the site. The function should take at least 230one argument, the value to be filtered, and return the filtered value. 231</p><h4>def <code>test(self, name: str)</code></h4><p>A decorator that registers a test function with the site. The function should take at least 232one argument, the value to be tested, and return a boolean. 233</p><h4>def <code>build(self, dont_delete: typing.Optional[list[str]] = None)</code></h4><p>Build (save) the site to the build directory it was constructed with. This will create the 234directory if it does not exist, clear it (but not delete it) and then write all the pages. 235You can set <code>dont_delete</code> to a list of files that should not be deleted when the directory 236is cleared, for example, the <code>.git</code>. 237</p><h4><code>context: dict[str, typing.Any]</code></h4><p>A dictionary containing names that are available to all pages. It can be overriden by the 238page's context or modified at any time. 239</p><h3>class <code>ampoule_ssg.Page(str)</code></h3><p><code>Page</code> is a class that represents a single page on the site. A page is composed of a 240template, a document and a context. 241</p><h4>def <code>__new__(cls, site: Site, template: str, document: Document = None, **kwargs)</code></h4><p>Create a new page object. <code>site</code> is the site object that the page belongs to. <code>template</code> is 242the template the document will be put in. <code>document</code> is the document object that will be 243passed to the template. <code>kwargs</code> are names that will be available to the template for 244additional context. 245</p><p>If there's no document, it will not be available to the template. This is useful for single 246pages with fully static content, like a contact page. 247</p><h3>class <code>ampoule_ssg.Static(bytes)</code></h3><p><code>Static</code> is a class that represents a single static file on the site. A static file is 248just the content, in binary format, and it doesn't use templating. 249</p><h4>def <code>__new__(cls, site: Site, document: Document)</code></h4><p>Create a new static object. <code>site</code> is the site object that the static file belongs to. 250<code>document</code> is the document object that will be written to the file; it can contain any 251encoding, even text, and will be written as-is. 252</p><h3>class <code>ampoule_ssg.Index</code></h3><p>An index is a collection of documents that can be iterated over or added to a site using 253a common template (see <code>ampoule_ssg.Site.add_from_index</code>). 254</p><h4>def <code>__init__(self, directory: typing.Union[str, bytes, os.PathLike], recursive: bool = False, url_transform: typing.Callable = lambda x: x, sort_by: typing.Callable = lambda x: x.file_name, exclude: typing.Union[str, NoneType] = None, static: bool = False)</code></h4><p>Create a new index. <code>directory</code> is the directory to get content from. If <code>recursive</code> is 255true, the whole tree of that directory will be indexed. <code>url_transform</code> is a function that 256will be applied to the file name to get the new file name. Generally you want to set it so 257it makes them end in <code>.html</code> so dumb servers can serve them correctly. However, for static 258files you most likely will not set it. <code>sort_by</code> is the key after which to sort the 259documents after they are indexed; by default it is the file name. <code>exclude</code> is a regular 260expression that will be used to exclude files from the index. If the index is <code>static</code>, 261all documents will be parsed as-is, without removing front matter. 262</p><h4>def <code>__iter__(self)</code></h4><p>Return an iterator for the index. 263</p><h4>def <code>__next__(self)</code></h4><p>Get the next document in the index. 264</p><h4>def <code>__repr__(self)</code></h4><p>Return a string representation of the index. It contains the directory and the names 265of the documents in it. 266</p><h4>def <code>__len__(self)</code></h4><p>Return the number of documents in the index, that is, its length. 267</p><h3>class <code>ampoule_ssg.Document</code></h3><p>A document is a file, not rendered, but available for use. It is what is passed to the 268template as <code>document</code> for processing. Generally, you won't create these yourself, but 269rather use them as they are returned by an index. However, if you do need one, you can 270create it manually and pass it to a page. 271</p><p>Documents will parse YAML front matter for textual files, unless disabled. The front matter 272is available as an attribute of the document, and can be accessed using indexing syntax. 273</p><h4>def <code>__init__(self, file_name: typing.Union[str, bytes, os.PathLike], url_transform: typing.Callable = lambda x: x, front_matter_enabled: bool = True)</code></h4><p>Create a new document. <code>file_name</code> is the name of the file. <code>url_transform</code> is a function 274that will be applied to the file name to get the new file name; it has the same meaning as 275in the <code>Index</code>. <code>front_matter_enabled</code> is a boolean that determines whether the document 276will parse YAML front matter. 277</p><h4>def <code>__repr__(self)</code></h4><p>Return a string containing <code>Document</code> and the file name. 278</p><h4>def <code>__getitem__(self, item: str)</code></h4><p>Access the document's front matter. If front matter is disabled or not available, this will 279never work. 280</p><h4>def <code>__setitem__(self, item: str, value: typing.Any)</code></h4><p>Change the document's front matter. It works even if it wasn't parsed, because YAML 281behaves like a dictionary. 282</p><h4>def <code>__delitem__(self, item: str)</code></h4><p>Delete an item from the document's front matter. 283</p><h4>def <code>__contains__(self, item: str)</code></h4><p>Check if an item is in the document's front matter. 284</p><h2>Licence</h2><p>This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of 285the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 286of the License, or (at your option) any later version. 287</p><p>This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; 288without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See 289the GNU General Public License for more details. 290</p><p>You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. 291If not, see <a href="https://www.gnu.org/licenses/">https://www.gnu.org/licenses/</a>. 292</p> 293</article> 294 295</main> 296<footer> 297<p>Page generated on Sunday, 2 February 2025 at 21:30:11</p> 298<p xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" >This work is marked with <a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/?ref=chooser-v1" target="_blank" rel="license noopener noreferrer" style="display:inline-block;">CC0 1.0 Universal</a> (🄍). No rights reserved.</p> 299<p>Hosted at <a href="https://roundabout-host.com/roundabout">Roundabout-host</a> using the static site service, and generated with <a href="/projects/ampoule.html">Ampoule</a>.</p> 300<a href="#">Back to top</a> 301</footer> 302</body> 303</html>