Metalsmith SSG

[Yukinu]

Metalsmith is the SSG I use to create the main yukinu site. In reality, Metalsmith is not strictly an SSG, but rather a generic framework for transforming files. Metalsmith is written in JavaScript and the codebase is quite small; most of the functionality comes from plugins.

Here is a basic Metalsmith example:

Code: Select all

var Metalsmith  = require('metalsmith');
var markdown    = require('metalsmith-markdown');

Metalsmith(__dirname)
  .source('./src')
  .destination('./build')
  .use(markdown())
  .build(function(err) {
    if (err) throw err;
  });

This code loads all of the files in ./src into memory, and converts the markdown content to html for each file with .md extension using the metalsmith-markdown plugin, changing the extension to .html. Once all plugins have run, the files are written to ./build.

Writing plugins for Metalsmith is quite simple; You create a function with 3 arguments (files, metalsmith, done), and register the function with a call to .use(). Here is a basic plugin, it just loop through all the loaded files and transforms their contents:

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function(files, metalsmith, done) {
  for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) {
    var fileName = files[i];
    var file = files[fileName];
    var content = file.content;
    
    // Transform content here.
    
    file.content = content;
  }
  
  done();
}

My site is currently using ~30 plugins. Half of the plugins are from the NPM package repo, the other half are custom plugins that I use to, among other things, generate the feeds, modify html, generate redirects, and build the zine.