Static Site Non-Framework
Inspired by Sinatra's simplicity and ease of use, Frank lets you build static sites using your favorite libs. Frank has a built in development server for previewing work as you develop, an "export" command for compiling and saving your work out to static html and css, and a publish command for copying your exported pages to a server.
Frank uses Tilt, so it comes with support for Haml & Sass, LESS, Builder, ERB, and Liquid.
Create a new project with:
$ frank new
Then
cdand start up the server with:
$ frank server
Frank's holdin' it down... 0.0.0.0:3601
And you're ready to get to work. By default, dynamic templates are served from the
dynamicfolder, static files are served from the
staticfolder, and layouts are served from the
layoutsfolder.
When you're done working:
$ frank export
to compile templates and copy them--along with static your assets--into
(or toexport/if you don't specify an ).
Or,
$ frank export --production
to compile & copy over, but organized to work as a static website in production. (e.g. folders named after your views, with an
index.htmlinside)
You can add publish settings in setup.rb and publish directly to a server via scp.
$ frank publish
As of version 0.4, Frank no longer uses settings.yml. However you can use
frank upgradein order convert your old settings.yml to the new setup.rb format.
Frank (as of 1.0) has support for saving "templates" in
~/.frank_templates. This is very handy if find yourself wanting a custom starting point. All you have to do to use the feature is create a
~/.frank_templatesfolder and start putting templates in it.
Once you have a few templates saved, when you run
frank newyou'll be presented with a list of templates to choose from as the starting point for the project.
All of your templates, less, sass &c. go into
/dynamicby default. You can organize them into subfolders if you've got lots.
Writing views is simple. Say you've got a
blog.hamlin
/dynamic; just browse over to
http://0.0.0.0:3601/blogand your view will be parsed and served up as html.
Frank was designed to make controllers unnecessary. But, sometimes it's nice to have variables in your templates / layouts. This is particularly handy if you want to set the page title (in the layout) according to the view. This is simple, now, with meta data.
Meta fields go at the top of any view, and are written in YAML. To mark the end of the meta section, place the meta delimeter,
META---, on a blank line. You can use as many hyphens as you'd like (as long as there are 3).
Meta fields are then available as local variables to all templating languages that support them--in the view & layout:
view: title: My Rad Page author: My Rad Self ---------------------------------------------META%h1= title %h3= 'By ' + author
layout: %title= title + '--My Rad Site'
Layouts are also simple with Frank. Create a
default.haml(or
.rhtml, etc.), in the
layoutsfolder, and include a
yieldsomewhere therein; views using the layout will be inserted there.
You can namespace your layouts using folders:
dynamic_folder/blog/a-blog-post.haml,
layouts/blog/default.haml,
layouts/default.haml
Frank also supports choosing layouts on a view-by-view basis via meta data. Just add a
layoutmeta field:
layout: my_layout.haml ---------------------------------------------META %h1 I'm using my_layout.haml instead of default.haml!
or if you don't want a layout at all:
layout: nil ---------------------------------------------META %h1 No layout here!
Frank comes with a helper method,
render_partial, for including partials in your views.
You can also add your own helper methods easily.
To create a partial, make a new file like any of your other views, but prefix its name with an underscore.
For example, if I have a partial named
_footer.haml, I can include this in my Haml views like this:
= render_partial 'footer'
You can also send local variables to partials like this:
= render_partial 'footer', :local_variable_name => 'some_value'
Helper methods are also easy. Just open up
helpers.rband add your methods to the
FrankHelpersmodule; that's it. Use them just like
render_partial.
Frank has a handy automatic page refreshing helper. Just include
= refresh(or equivalent) in your view, and Frank will automatically refresh the page for you whenever you save a project file. This eliminates the tedium of hundreds of manual refreshes over the course of building a project.
When it's time export with
frank export, Frank will leave out the JavasScript bits of the refresher.
Frank now has a
current_pathvariable that you can use to set selected states on nav items. It will return the path info from the template being processed. You also, have access to the variable from layouts and from the
frank exportcommand.
You can easily generate dummy text like so:
%p= lorem.sentences 3
This will return 3 sentences of standard Lorem Ipsum.
loremalso has all of the following methods for generating dummy text:
lorem.sentence # returns a single sentence lorem.words 5 # returns 5 individual words lorem.word lorem.paragraphs 10 lorem.paragraph lorem.date # accepts a strftime format argument lorem.name lorem.first_name lorem.last_name lorem.email
Frank now uses placehold.it for placeholder images, the
lorem.imagehelper supports backgroundcolor, color, randomcolor, and text options:
lorem.image('300x400') #=> http://placehold.it/300x400 lorem.image('300x400', :background_color => '333', :color => 'fff') #=> http://placehold.it/300x400/333/fff lorem.image('300x400', :random_color => true) #=> http://placehold.it/300x400/f47av7/9fbc34d lorem.image('300x400', :text => 'blah') #=> http://placehold.it/300x400&text=blah
All of the lorem helpers accept an optional "replacement" argument. This will be the text rendered when you
frank export.
For example
lorem.sentence("")will generate a lorem sentence when you view the page using the
frank serverfor development. However, when you
frank exportthe template will render "<%= page.content %>". This is useful if you plan on moving a frank project into a framework. (e.g. rails, sinatra, django, etc)
In
setup.rb, you can change your folder names, and server port & host name. Check the comments there if you need help.
$ gem install frank