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frank

by blahed

blahed / frank

Static Site Non-Framework

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Frank

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.

Overview

Create a new project with:

$ frank new

Then 

cd
and 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 

dynamic
folder, static files are served from the 
static
folder, and layouts are served from the 
layouts
folder.

When you're done working:

$ frank export

to compile templates and copy them--along with static your assets--into 

 (or to 
export/
 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.html
 inside)


You can add publish settings in setup.rb and publish directly to a server via scp.


$ frank publish



Upgrading



As of version 0.4, Frank no longer uses settings.yml. However you can use 
frank upgrade
 in order convert your old settings.yml to the new setup.rb format.


Frank Templates



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_templates
 folder and start putting templates in it.


Once you have a few templates saved, when you run 
frank new 
 you'll be presented with a list of templates to choose from as the starting point for the project.


Views & Meta Data



All of your templates, less, sass &c. go into 
/dynamic
 by default.
You can organize them into subfolders if you've got lots.


Views



Writing views is simple. Say you've got a 
blog.haml
 in 
/dynamic
; just browse over to

http://0.0.0.0:3601/blog
 and your view will be parsed and served up as html.


Meta Data



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 (updated in 0.3)



Layouts are also simple with Frank. Create a 
default.haml
 (or 
.rhtml
, etc.),
in the 
layouts
 folder, and include a 
yield
 somewhere therein; views using the
layout will be inserted there.


Namespacing Layouts



You can namespace your layouts using folders:



    

  • When rendering a view--
    dynamic_folder/blog/a-blog-post.haml
    ,
    • 

  • Frank would first look for the layout 
    layouts/blog/default.haml
    ,
    • 

  • and if not found use fall back on 
    layouts/default.haml
    

    • 




Multiple/No Layouts



Frank also supports choosing layouts on a view-by-view basis via meta data. Just add a

layout
 meta 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!



Partials & Helpers



Frank comes with a helper method, 
render_partial
, for including partials
in your views.


You can also add your own helper methods easily.



Partials



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'



Helpers



Helper methods are also easy. Just open up 
helpers.rb
 and add your methods
to the 
FrankHelpers
 module; that's it. Use them just like 
render_partial
.


Built-in Helpers



Auto-Refresh



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.


Current Path



Frank now has a 
current_path
 variable 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 export
 command.


Placeholder Text



You can easily generate dummy text like so:


 %p= lorem.sentences 3



This will return 3 sentences of standard Lorem Ipsum. 
lorem
 also 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



Placeholder Images



Frank now uses placehold.it for placeholder images, the 
lorem.image
 helper 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



Replacement Text



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 server
 for development.
However, when you 
frank export
 the 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)


Configuration



In 
setup.rb
, you can change your folder names, and server port & host name.
Check the comments there if you need help.


Installation


$ gem install frank



Contributors (in no particular order)



    

  • railsjedi (Jacques Crocker)
    • 

  • asymmetric (Lorenzo Manacorda)
    • 

  • timmywil (timmywil)
    • 

  • sce (Sten Christoffer Eliesen)
    • 

  • btelles (Bernie Telles)
    • 

  • mitchellbryson (Mitchell Bryson)
    • 

  • nwah (Noah Burney)
    • 


    
    
    
    
    
    
  


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