App-Followme
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lib/App/Followme/Guide.pm view on Meta::CPAN
package App::Followme::Guide;
use 5.008005;
use strict;
use warnings;
use integer;
use base qw(Pod::Text);
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Create a new object to display the pod in this document
sub new {
my ($pkg) = @_;
my $self = Pod::Text->new();
return bless($self, $pkg);
}
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Print the pod from this file into a string
sub print {
my ($self) = @_;
my $result;
$self->output_string(\$result);
$self->parse_file(__FILE__);
return $result;
}
1;
=pod
=encoding utf-8
=head1 NAME
App::Followme::Guide - How to install, configure, and run followme
=head1 SYNOPSIS
followme [directory]
=head1 DESCRIPTION
Updates a static website after changes. Constant portions of each page are
updated to match, text files are converted to html, indexes are created
for files in the archive, and changed files are uploaded to the remote server.
The followme script is run on the directory or file passed as its argument. If
no argument is given, it is run on the current directory.
If a file is passed, the script is run on the directory the file is in. In
addition, the script is run in quick mode, meaning that only the directory
the file is in is checked for changes. Otherwise, not only that directory, but
all directories below it are checked.
=head1 CHANGES
This version is version two of followme. In the past the code constructed a hash
and passed it to the template, which used the values in the hash to produce the
web page. In version two the code passes an object to the template, which calls
the build method for each variable in the template, passing the name of the
variable and a filename to retrieve it from as arguments. The module then
returns the value, which is used to fill in the template. The major user visible
change is that the template syntax has changed, the new syntax is a subset of the
previous syntax. Please see L<App::Followme::Template> for a description of the
template syntax.
The second change is that the configuration parameters of some of the modules
has changed. The new configuration parameters are described in each module.
The motivation for the change is that placing the variable building in a separate
class allows more than one type of file to be handled by modules placed in the
configurarion file. Each class handles a type of file and the name of the class
which builds the variables is a configuration parameter.
The third change is that the configuration file format has changed
to use a subset of yaml instead of . The new configuration file format is decribed
below. The biggest change is to how modules are assigned to run_before and
run_after. Previously this is how the configuration file would look:
author = Your Name
run_before = App::Followme::FormatPage
run_before = App::Followme::ConvertPage
run_after = App::Followme::CreateSitemap
This is how the same lines in the configuration file look now:
author: Your Name
run_before:
- App::Followme::FormatPage
- App::Followme::ConvertPage
run_after:
- App::Followme::CreateSitemap
=head1 INSTALLATION
First, install the L<App::Followme> module from CPAN. It will copy the
followme script to /usr/local/bin, so it will be on your search path.
sudo cpanm App::Followme
Then create a folder to contain the new website. Run followme with the
init option in that directory
mkdir website
cd website
followme --init
When you run followme with the --init flag, it will install the initial
templates and configuration files. The initial setup is configured to update
pages to maintain a consistent look for the site and simplify the onboarding of
new content.
The first page will serve as a prototype for the rest of your site. When you
look at the html page, you will see that it contains comments looking like
<!-- section primary -->
<!-- endsection primary -->
These comments mark the parts of the prototype that will change from page to
page from the parts that are constant across the entire site. Everything
outside the comments is the constant portion of the page. When you have
more than one html page in the folder, you can edit any page, run followme,
and the other pages will be updated to match it.
So you should edit your first page and add any other files you need to create
the look of your site, such as the style sheets.
You can also use followme on an existing site. Run the command
followme --init
in the top directory of your site. The init option will not overwrite any
existing files in your site. Then look at the convert page template it has
created:
cat _templates/convert_page.htm
Edit an existing page on your site to have all the section comments in this
template. In the template shipped with this package there are three section
names: meta, primary, and secondary. The meta section is in the html header
and contains the page metadata, although it may also contain other content
tht varies between pages. The primary section contains the page content that
is maintained by you. None of this package's modules will change it. The
secondary section contains content that is updated by the modules in this
package and you will not normally change it.
After you edit a single page, you can place the App::Followme::EditSections
module in the configuration file, after the run_efore line:
run_before:
- App::Followme::EditSections
- App::Followme::FormatPage
- App::Followme::ConvertPage
If you then run followme, it will modify the other pages on your website to
match the page you have edited. Then remove the EditSections module from
the configuration file.
=head1 CONFIGURATION
The configuration file for followme is followme.cfg in the top directory of
your site. Configuration file lines are in a subset of yaml format. The format
is described in L<App::Followme::NestedText>. Briefy, the top level is a hash,
with name-value pairs in the format
name: value
There should be no space between the name and the colon and one space between
the colon and value. The value may also be an array. The array elements are listed
one per line preceded by a dash:
name:
- first value
- second value
Configuration files may also contain blank lines or comment lines
starting with a C<#>. Subdirectories of the top directory may also contain
configuration files. Values in these configuration files are combined with those
set in the configuration files in directories above it, If it has a parameter of
the same name as a configuration file in a higher directory, it overrides it for
that directory and its subdirectories.
Configuration files contain the names of the Perl modules to be run by followme
in the parameters named run_before and run_after. These parameters should be
arrays, and thus are listed one per line indented from the field name and preceded
by a dash:
run_before:
- App::Followme::FormatPage
- App::Followme::ConvertPage
run_after:
- App::Followme::CreateSitemap
Perl modules are run in the order they appear in the configuration file. If they
are named run_before then they are run before modules in any configuration files
contained in subdirectories. If they are named run_after, they are run after
modules which are named in the configuration files in subdirectories. Other
parameters in the configuration files are written to a hash. This hash is passed
to the new method of each module as it loaded, overriding the default values of
the parameters when creating the new object.
These modules are distributed with followme:
=over 4
=item L<App::Followme::FormatPage>
This module updates the web pages in a folder to match the most recently
modified page. Each web page has sections that are different from other pages
and other sections that are the same. The sections that differ are enclosed in
html comments that look like
<!-- section name-->
<!-- endsection name -->
and indicate where the section begins and ends. When a page is changed, this
module checks the text outside of these comments. If that text has changed. the
other pages on the site are also changed to match the page that has changed.
Each page updated by substituting all its named blocks into corresponding block
in the changed page. The effect is that all the text outside the named blocks
are updated to be the same across all the web pages.
In addition to normal section blocks, there are per folder section blocks.
The contents of these blocks is kept constant across all files in a folder and
all subfolders of it. If the block is changed in one file in the folder, it will
be updated in all the other files. Per folder section blocks look like
<!-- section name in folder_name -->
<!-- endsection name -->
where folder_name is the the folder the content is kept constant across. The
folder name is not a full path, it is the last folder in the path.
=item L<App::Followme::ConvertPage>
This module changes text files to html files. By default the text files are
in Markdown format, though other converters can be used. Markdown format is
described at:
http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
It builds several variables and substitutes them into the page template. The
most significant variable is body, which is the contents of the text file
after it has been converted to html. The title is built from the title of
the file if one is put at the top of the file. If the file has no
title, it is built from the file name, replacing dashes with blanks and
capitalizing each word, The url and absolute_url are built from the html file
name. To change the look of the html page, edit the page template. Only blocks
inside the section comments will be in the resulting page, editing the text
outside it will have no effect on the resulting page. A complete listing of the
variables is given in the variables section.
=item L<App::Followme::CreateIndex>
This module builds an index for a directory containing links to all the files
with the specified extension contained in it. The same variables mentioned above
are calculated for each file, with the exception of body. Comments that look like
<!-- for @files -->
<!-- endfor -->
indicate the section of the template that is repeated for each file contained
in the index.
=item L<App::Followme::CreateGallery>
Create a photo gallery for images in a directory. Each image must have a
thumbnail image whose name has the suffix "-thumb". The suffix name is a
configuration parameter. The code is very similar to
L<App::Followme::CreateIndex>, but the template is more complex, so it is a
separate module.
=item L<App::Followme::CreateRss>
This module creates an rss file from the metadata of the most recently updated
files in a directory. It is a companion to App::Followme::CreateIndex and should
be used if you also want an rss file.
=item L<App::Followme::CreateSitemap>
This module creates a sitemap file, which is a text file containing the url of
every page on the site, one per line. It is also intended as a simple example of
how to write a module that can be run by followme.
=item L<App::Followme::UploadSite>
This module uploads changed files to a remote site. The default method to do the
uploads is local copy, but that can be changed by changing the parameter upload_pkg.
This package computes a checksum for every file in the site. If the checksum has
changed since the last time it was run, the file is uploaded to the remote site.
If there is a checksum, but no local file, the file is deleted from the remote
site. If followme is run in quick mode, only files whose modification date is
later then the last time it was run are checked.
=back
=head1 RUNNING
The followme script is run on the directory or file passed as its argument. If
no argument is given, it is run on the current directory. If a file is passed,
the script is run on the directory the file is in and followme is run in
quick mode. Quick mode is an implicit promise that only the named file has
been changed since last time. Each module can make of this assumption what it
will, but it is supposed to shorten the list of files examined.
Followme looks for its configuration files in all the directories above the
directory it is run from and runs all the modules it finds in them. But they are
are only run on the folder it is run from and subfolders of it. Followme only
looks at the folder it is run from to determine if other files in the folder
need to be updated. So after changing a file, followme should be run from the
directory containing the file.
Templates support the basic control structures in Perl: "for" loops and
"if-else" blocks. Creating output is a two step process. First you generate a
subroutine from one or more templates, then you call the subroutine with your
data to generate the output.
The template format is line oriented. Commands are enclosed in html comments
(<!-- -->). A command may be preceded by white space. If a command is a block
command, it is terminated by the word "end" followed by the command name. For
example, the "for" command is terminated by an "endfor" command and the "if"
command by an "endif" command.
All lines may contain variables. As in Perl, variables are a sigil character
('$' or '@') followed by one or more word characters. For example, C<$name> or
C<@names>. To indicate a literal character instead of a variable, precede the
sigil with a backslash. When you run the subroutine that this module generates,
you pass it a metadata object. The subroutine replaces variables in the template
with the value in the field built by the metadata object.
If the first non-white characters on a line are the command start string, the
line is interpreted as a command. The command name continues up to the first
white space character. The text following the initial span of white space is the
command argument. The argument continues up to the command end string.
Variables in the template have the same format as ordinary Perl variables,
a string of word characters starting with a sigil character. for example,
$body @files
are examples of variables. Array variable names (variable names starting with
a C<@>) may have a suffix that indicates how the array is sorted. You can add
a suffix to a scalar variable (variable names strting with a C<$>) but it
will have no effect. The format for the name is:
@data_field[_by_$sort_field][_reversed]
the brackets are not part of the variable name. They are there to indicate that
these sections are optional. Two examples of variables with sort suffixes are
@files_by_size
@all_files_by_mdate_reversed
The second suffix, _reversed, indicates that the variable is sorted from
largest to smallest instead of the usual format, from smallest to largest.
When used with date fields _reversed indicates the variable is sorted from
most recent to oldest.
The following commands are supported in templates:
=over 4
=item do
The remainder of the line is interpreted as Perl code.
=item for
Expand the text between the "for" and "endfor" commands several times. The
argument to the "for" command should be an expression evaluating to a list. The
code will expand the text in the for block once for each element in the list.
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