Fornax

Fornax is a scriptable static site generator using type safe F# DSL to define page layouts.

Fornax is part of the Ionide tooling suite - You can support its development on Open Collective.

Working features

• Creating custom data loaders using .fsx files, meaning you can use anything you can imagine as a source of data for your site, not only predefined .md or .yml files
• Creating custom generators using .fsx files, meaning you can generate any type of output you want
• Dynamic configuration using .fsx file
• Watch mode that rebuilds your page whenever you change data, or any script file.

Installation

Fornax is released as a global .Net Core tool. You can install it with dotnet tool install fornax -g

CLI Application

The main functionality of Fornax comes from CLI applications that lets user scaffold, and generate webpages.

• fornax new - scaffolds new blog in current working directory using a really simple template
• fornax build - builds webpage, puts output to _public folder
• fornax watch - starts a small webserver that hosts your generated site, and a background process that recompiles the site whenever any changes are detected. This is the recommended way of working with Fornax.
• fornax clean - removes the output directory and any temp files
• fornax version - prints out the currently-installed version of Fornax
• fornax help - prints out help

Getting started

Easiest way to get started with fornax is running fornax new and then fornax watch - this will create a fairly minimal blog site template, start fornax in watch mode and then start a webserver. Then you can go to localhost:8080 in your browser to see the page, and edit the scaffolded files in an editor to make changes. Additionally, you can take a look at the samples folder in this repository - it has a couple more loaders and generators that you may use in your website.

Website definition

Fornax is using normal F# code (F# script files) to define any of its core concepts: loaders, generators and config.

SiteContents

SiteContents is a fairly simple type that provides access to any information available to Fornax. The information is provided by using loaders and can then be accessed in generators.

SiteContents has several functions in it's public API:

type A = {a: string}
type B = {b: int; c: int}

let sc = SiteContents()
sc.Add({a = "test"})
sc.Add({a = "test2"})
sc.Add({a = "test3"})

sc.Add({b = 1; c = 3}) //You can add objects of different types, `Add` method is generic.

let as = sc.TryGetValues<A>() //This will return an option of sequence of all added elements for a given type - in this case it will be 3 elements
let b = sc.TryGetValue<B>() //This will return an option of element for given type

Loaders

Loader is an F# script responsible for loading external data into generation context. The data typically includes things like content of .md files, some global site configuration, etc. But since those are normal F# functions, you can do whatever you need. Want to load information from local database, or from the internet? Sure, why not. Want to use the World Bank type provider to include some of the World Bank statistics? That's also possible - you can use any dependency in loader, just as in a normal F# script.

Loaders are normal F# functions that takes as an input SiteContents and absolute path to the page root, and returns SiteContents:

#r "../_lib/Fornax.Core.dll"

type Page = {
    title: string
    link: string
}

let loader (projectRoot: string) (siteContent: SiteContents) =
    siteContent.Add({title = "Home"; link = "/"})
    siteContent.Add({title = "About"; link = "/about.html"})
    siteContent.Add({title = "Contact"; link = "/contact.html"})

    siteContent

Important note: You can (and probably should) define multiple loaders - they will all be executed before site generation, and will propagate information into SiteContents

Generators

Generator is an F# script responsible for generating output of the Fornax process. This is usually .html file, but can be anything else - actually generator API just requires to return string that will be saved to a file. Generators are, again, plain F# functions that as input takes SiteContents, absolute path to the page root, relative path to the file that's currently processed (may be empty for the global generators) and returns string:

#r "../_lib/Fornax.Core.dll"
#if !FORNAX
#load "../loaders/postloader.fsx"
#endif

open Html

let generate' (ctx : SiteContents) (_: string) =
    let posts = ctx.TryGetValues<Postloader.Post> () |> Option.defaultValue Seq.empty

    let psts =
        posts
        |> Seq.toList
        |> List.map (fun p -> span [] [!! p.link] )

    html [] [
        div [] psts
    ]

let generate (ctx : SiteContents) (projectRoot: string) (page: string) =
    generate' ctx page
    |> HtmlElement.ToString

Important note: You can (and probably should) define multiple generators - they will generate different kinds of pages and/or content, such as post, index, about, rss etc.

Configuration

Configuration is an F# script file that defines when which analyzers need to be run, and how to save its output. A Config.fsx file needs to be put in the root of your site project (the place from which you run the fornax CLI tool)

#r "../_lib/Fornax.Core.dll"

open Config
open System.IO

let postPredicate (projectRoot: string, page: string) =
    let fileName = Path.Combine(projectRoot,page)
    let ext = Path.GetExtension page
    if ext = ".md" then
        let ctn = File.ReadAllText fileName
        ctn.Contains("layout: post")
    else
        false

let staticPredicate (projectRoot: string, page: string) =
    let ext = Path.GetExtension page
    if page.Contains "_public" ||
       page.Contains "_bin" ||
       page.Contains "_lib" ||
       page.Contains "_data" ||
       page.Contains "_settings" ||
       page.Contains "_config.yml" ||
       page.Contains ".sass-cache" ||
       page.Contains ".git" ||
       page.Contains ".ionide" ||
       ext = ".fsx"
    then
        false
    else
        true

let config = {
    Generators = [
        {Script = "less.fsx"; Trigger = OnFileExt ".less"; OutputFile = ChangeExtension "css" }
        {Script = "sass.fsx"; Trigger = OnFileExt ".scss"; OutputFile = ChangeExtension "css" }
        {Script = "post.fsx"; Trigger = OnFilePredicate postPredicate; OutputFile = ChangeExtension "html" }
        {Script = "staticfile.fsx"; Trigger = OnFilePredicate staticPredicate; OutputFile = SameFileName }
        {Script = "index.fsx"; Trigger = Once; OutputFile = NewFileName "index.html" }

    ]
}

Possible Generator Triggers are:

• Once : Runs once, globally.
• OnFile filename: Run once for the given filename.
• OnFileExt extension : Runs once for each file with the given extension.
• OnFilePredicate predicate : Runs once for each file satisfying the predicate (string -> string).

Possible Generator Outputs are:

• SameFileName : Output has the same filename as input file.
• ChangeExtension newExtension : Output has the same filename but with extention change to newExtension.
• NewFileName newFileName : Output filename is newFileName.
• Custom mapper : Output filename is the result of applying the mapper to the input filename.
• MultipleFiles mapper : Outputs multiple files, the names of which are a result of applying the mapper to the first string output of the generator.

Note: For MultipleFiles the generate function must output a list<string * string>.

How to contribute

Imposter syndrome disclaimer: I want your help. No really, I do.

There might be a little voice inside that tells you you're not ready; that you need to do one more tutorial, or learn another framework, or write a few more blog posts before you can help me with this project.

I assure you, that's not the case.

This project has some clear Contribution Guidelines and expectations that you can read here.

The contribution guidelines outline the process that you'll need to follow to get a patch merged. By making expectations and process explicit, I hope it will make it easier for you to contribute.

And you don't just have to write code. You can help out by writing documentation, tests, or even by giving feedback about this work. (And yes, that includes giving feedback about the contribution guidelines.)

Thank you for contributing!

Build process

• You need .NET 6.0 SDK
• Run dotnet tool restore to restore the .NET 6 local tools defined at .config/dotnet-tools.json
• To build the project run dotnet run (this will run the build.fsproj project that contains the FAKE build pipeline.)
• To run unit tests run dotnet run Test

Contributing and copyright

The project is hosted on GitHub where you can report issues, fork the project and submit pull requests. Please read Contribution Guide

The library is available under MIT license, which allows modification and redistribution for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.

Please note that this project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By participating in this project you agree to abide by its terms.