Flasket

Micro blog powered by Flask and flat files that can be compiled to a static site.

Quickstart

1. Install dependencies

   python -m venv venv

   source venv/bin/activate

   pip install -r requirements.txt

2. Run the development server for local testing

   flask run

   or FLASK_ENV=development flask run if you need need auto-reloading on python/template changes (not needed for editing posts)

3. Build a production ready static version of the site

   flask freeze

4. To test out the built static site you can use the http.server module

   cd ./build && python -m http.server 8000

   Then open the browser to localhost:8000

Demo Site

https://carc1n0gen.github.io/flasket/

Writing Blog Posts

Just create markdown files with a name like YYYY-MM-DD-post-title.md in the posts folder and they will be instantly visible when running the development server, and in the built static site the next time you run the freeze command. Posts don't support jinja template syntax.

A file named 2020-10-25-hello-world.md will be accessible at http://example.com/2020/10/25/hello-world/

Creating Regular Pages

Create html files (which are actually jinja template files) in the templates/pages folder and they will be instantly visible

A file named about.html will be accessible at http://example.com/about/

A file in the folder foo and called bar.html will be accessible at http://example.com/foo/bar/

When creating these pages, you can extend/include template from the configured theme with theme('template_name.html'), otherwise if you want to refer to your own templates from the templates folder use just plain 'template_name.html'.

example:

{# extend or include a theme template file #}
{% extends theme('base.html') %}
{% include theme('nav.html') %}

{# extend or include one of your own template files #}
{% extends 'base.html' %}
{% include 'nav.html' %}

Themes

Themes go in the themes folder (imagine that!). At a minimum, a theme must have the following 5 templates: 404.html, blog.html, feed.xml, page.html, post.html. A theme can have as many additional templates/includes as it wishes, these are just the main ones required. Additionally, a theme needs a static folder along side those template files, if the theme should ship with static files like css/js/images.

You can override the themes version of these 5 templates by putting a template with the same file name in the templates folder. This is the favoured approach over editing the theme directly. Of course if you find yourself wanting to override everything, you could copy the whole theme to a new one also.

A theme may provide pages in the pages folder within the theme. These pages can also be overridden by just creating your own page with the same name.

Deploying to Github Pages

Here is an example github actions configuration file that will deploy the static site to Github Pages. Paste it in a new file /.github/workflows/main.yml in your repo.

name: Build and deploy to github pages
on:
  push:
    branches: [ main ] # Change this to the branch you want to have build every push

jobs:
  build-and-deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Set up python 3.8
        uses: actions/setup-python@v2
        with:
          python-version: '3.8'
      
      - name: Install dependencies and build
        run: |
          pip install -r requirements.txt
          flask freeze

      - name: Deploy
        uses: JamesIves/[email protected]
        with:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          BRANCH: gh-pages
          FOLDER: build
          CLEAN: true

Additionally, if you want to deploy to Github Pages on a repo other than <username>.github.io (which makes them sort of like a subdirectory on your main Github Pages site), you will want to add an additional configuration to config.yml in order for generated urls to be correct.

FREEZER_BASE_URL: http://<username>.github.io/<repo-name>/