Blego

Blego is an exceptionally powerful and easy to use static site generator. It's a great choice for beginners AND veterans.

Progressively dynamic templates

Blego makes developing purpose-built templates effortless but it also enables a progressive transformation of static HTML sites. This makes Blego the perfect companion for thousands of existing HTML templates.

Relational data model

Blego is powered by an unopinionated data model that supports multiple types of relationships. It is trivial to access related data across multiple levels of hierarchy.

Flexibility

Blego is flexible enough to generate any type of a website like Blogs, Stores or Wikis. In fact, it can handle a lot more than just websites. It can generate XMLs, PDFs or even images.

Using Blego

Requirements

Blego requires Node.js 18 or newer. Visit https://nodejs.org to learn more.

Creating a project

npx blego new my-project

This will create a new directory with a simple Blego project already set up. You can replace my-project with any directory name you like.

Building a project

npx blego build

This will build your project and save it to the dist directory.

Serving a project

npx blego serve

This will start a web server from the dist directory. Visit http://localhost:3000 to see your generated project.

File system

Standard Blego project is preconfigured with the following files and directories.

data: Contains data files parsed into Stores. Learn more.

globals: Contains data files available globally. Learn more.

static: Contains files copied directly to the dist directory. Learn more.

template: Contains Handlebars.js template files. Learn more

blego.js: This is the brain of your Blego project. This file contains definitions of all relationships and instructions on how to build your project.

Building pages

To build a page add the following code to the blego.js file.

blego.page('page.html', 'welcome.html', { title: 'Hello World' });

This will create page.html using the welcome.html template populated with data passed in the last argument.

Template

Template files use Handlebars.js to fill in static markup with dynamic content.

<div class="entry">
  <h1>{{ title }}</h1>
  <div class="body">
    {{ body }}
  </div>
</div>

All templates are treated as Handlebars.js partials. This means that you can compose templates using shared components.

{{> header.html }}
Hello World
{{> footer.html }}

There is a lot more that Handlebars.js can do. Visit https://handlebarsjs.com to learn more.

Macros

Macros allow you to call Javascript functions from your template.

For example, you may want to report when the page was generated.

First you need to register a macro in the blego.js file.

blego.macro('currentDateTime', () => new Date().toLocaleString());

You can then use it in your templates.

<span>{{ currentDateTime }}</span>

Macros can also accept arguments.

blego.macro('getUserAge', (user) => user.age || 'Age not available');

<span>{{ getUserAge user }}</span>

Macros use Handlebars.js helpers. Visit https://handlebarsjs.com/#helpers to learn more.

Static files

Not all files used by a website are dynamically generated. Put your static files like images, CSS, etc. in the static directory and Blego will automatically copy them to the dist directory when building.

Data

Blego creates data Stores by parsing files from the data directory.

First tier subdirectories represent the Store name while the remaining file path represents the Record key. File extension is omitted from the Record key.

.
+- Data
   +- Pages
      +- home.md
      +- about.md
      +- about
         +- contact.md

Given this file structure, Blego will create a Store called Pages with 3 Records. The Records will have the following keys.

- home
- about
- about/contact

Stores

Stores provide many ways of accessing and manipulating the Records.

For example, you may want to get twitter handles for the five newest users.

blego.data.Users.sortBy('joinedAt').reverse().take(5).pluck('twitter');

See the API reference to learn more.

Data file types

Blego can parse many different data file types.

Markdown files use .md file extension.
HTML files use .html file extension.
Javascript files use .js file extension.
JSON files use .json file extension.
YAML files use .yaml file extension.

Markdown and HTML data files support Front Matter. Meta data provided is exposed as parameters of the Record while the content is available via the body parameter.

Visit https://github.com/jxson/front-matter to learn more about Front Matter.

Javascript data files must export an object which will be merged into the Record.

JSON and YAML files are parsed into Javascript object and merged into the Record.

Globals

Some data may need to be available globally. Data files in the globals directory will be automatically made available in every template file.

Note: Global data is a Javascript object and not a Store.

Below is a simple config.json file placed in the globals directory.

{
  "site_name": "My Project"
}

The data can be accessed in any template.

<h1>{{ config.site_name }}</h1>

Relationships

Blego must be told how the data models relate to each other. You may be used to thinking about relationships as one-to-one or one-to-many. However, it is important to also understand the direction of the relationship.

For example; A team has many players but a player has one team.

When creating a relationship between Books and Authors it makes a lot more sense to define the Authors in the Book model. But, this relationship must work both ways.

To define bidirectional relationship between Books and Authors you need to add the following code to the blego.js file.

blego.data.Books.linkToMany(blego.data.Authors, 'authors');
blego.data.Authors.linkFromMany(blego.data.Books, 'authors', 'books');

This will replace the Author keys in authors property of Book Records with actual Author Records. And, add books property to the Author Records containing related Book Records.