Writing pages¶

The content of pages are written into file in yaml format.

Technically speaking Python translate yaml files in dictionaries and lists, so within Almoststatic, pages are dictionaries of data.

To facilitate the writing of pages, the html contents can be written in markdown format which is easy to write and read and less error prone then standard html. But you can mix html and markdown if you need more control.

Pages are stored by default into ./content/pages folder, and we can arrange pages into subfolders.

Minimal page¶

Let see a minimal page:

---
title: My page
author: Me

content:
  - type: text_html
    id: row1
    text: |
      ## My text

      This is a **Markdown** text

- type: text_html
   id: row2
   text: |
      <h2>My second text</h2>

      And this is a plain <b>html</b> text

Every page can have some metadata values, but are not required. If omitted, default values are kept. Metadata recognized are:

key	value	default
filename	full pathname of file	Automatically calculated
pagename	name of page (same of url)	Automatically calculated
title	title of page	Should be present
description	description of page	Configurable in config.yaml
author	author of page	Configurable in config.yaml
templ_name	template name used to render the page	Configurable in config.yaml
extends	base page to extend	Configurable in config.yaml
cacheable	if page is cacheable it is rendered only once	Set to False it page must be recalculated at every call.
widgets_envelope	list of two strings with code surrounding widgets	Empty
date	date of page	If not declared the last date of modification
blog	special section with all data for blog pages	Empty for not blog pages

If needed, you can also add other fields which are available to all widgets, i.e.: if you add menu: EnglishMenu you can read it in pages as page.EnglishMenu

Every page must have a content key which contain a list of widgets which are rendered by templates. In the previous sample we have 2 widgets of type text_html, the first render some Markdown text and the second some html.

Each page can have a widgets_envelope which is the default envelope for each widget (see documentation for widgets below).

With this structure, the page content is send to the templ_name that extends the extends base page (see details in Jinja documentation). In this way the resulting page is a html page which contain some fixed contents like headers, navbars and footers whit a list of widgets in the middle.

With templ_name and extends metadata filed is possible to change the base look of classes of pages, i.e. you can have a look for standard pages and blog pages.

Some extra contents¶

Often you need more sophisticated pages, to do that you can add contents that is not automatically recognized, but that can be renderer into templates:

---
title: My page
author: Me

macros:
  $home: "[Home]({{get_url(^^index^^)}})"

hero:
  id: hero
  image: hero/hero1.jpg
  text: My content

aside:
  - type: text_html
    id: intro
    class: info-box
    text: |
      ## Aside
      This content is inserted out of main content flow.

content:
  - type: text_html
    id: row1
    text: |
      ## My text

      This is a **Markdown** text

In this case, content is automatically recognized, but hero and aside can be intercepted by templates, into the page can also be used the macro $home with the link to home page.

Widgets¶

So content list is composed by widgets and the same can be for extra contents, but what is a widget?

A widget is a portion of html. His data is declared into page and the look is given by a template, so the widget:

- type: text_html
  disabled: false
  text: |
    ## My text
    This is a **Markdown** text

is rendered by text_html.html template which look like:

<div>
   {{widget.text}}
</div>

This is really the simplest widget, to see more sophisticated widgets take a look at samples. With the power of Jinja2 template system, you can use conditions and loops with full level of complexity.

Note

in {{widget.text}}, "widget.text" is the field to write on page

Note

Markdown text is rendered by Python-Markdown which can be configured a little with extensions (see documentation). By default enabled extensions are: ['tables', 'fenced_code', 'attr_list','admonition'] but you can add more in your source code with:

fas.md_extensions.append('abbr')

See the source of flaskapp.py sample.

You can add official extension or third part extension or even write your extensions, see documentation.

Widgets fields¶

Almoststatic has few rules. To add a widget within a page you have to declare is type so Almoststatic can find the right template. Within a widget the only field recognized is text which is rendered as html.

You can optionally surround the widget into an envelope which is a list of 2 snippets of html code the first addedd before the widget and the second addedd after the widget. If not present a widgets_envelope at page level is searched.

Then you can add as many fields as your template requires. The following is a widget a little more complex:

- type: carousel
  id: carousel1
  class: carousel-fade
  envelope: ['<span>','</span>']
  btn_class: "btn btn-primary btn-lg"
  slides:
    - image: [carousel1/slide1.jpg, "image_class", "image_alt"]
      align: text-start
      text: |
        # My first image
        some text
      buttons: [["Learn more", "#"]]

    - image: [carousel1/slide2.jpg, "image_class1", "image_alt1"]
      text: |
        # My second image
        Another wonderful text, inline.
      buttons:
        [
          ["Gallery", "#", "btn btn-info"],
          ["Once more", "#", "btn btn-primary"],
        ]

    - image: [carousel1/slide3.jpg, "image_class2", "image_alt2"]
      align: text-end
      text: |
        # lorem text
      buttons: [["Learn more", "#", "btn btn-info"]]

In this case we have a carousel with several slides with images, text and buttons

If you like you can disable a widget, for example to choose between different solutions. Each widget can have the disabled field which excludes it from rendering.

- type: text_html
  disabled: True
  text: |
    ## This will never be rendered

Widgets best practices¶

With widgets you have a full freedom in fields. But we advise to use a consistent style of naming fields and use at least some of this

key	value
id	Every widget should have a unique id into the page, this helps to apply custom style
class	This can apply a css class to the widget
style	If `id` is set it’s easy to add some css style to the widget
text	is the main content field. It is also used to embed and include widgets

In the same way, use a clean style in your templates.

{# text_html

The simplest widget, display the text entered as html or markdown

parameters:
id: give a unique ID to every widget in the page
style: additional css style rules for this ID
class: set additional classes for the widget
text: text or content

-#}
{%include "include/widget_style.html" -%}
<div id="{{widget.id}}" class="{{widget.class}}">
   {{widget.text}}
</div>

Markdown links¶

In markdown it is very handy to use the syntax [MyLink](http://mysite.org) to represent links, it is short and readable but it has a problem with Almoststatic internal links which are defined by get_url("home").

This because the python markdown implementation uses the quotes to render the title attribute like in: [MyLink](http://mysite.org "mytitle") and then the standard syntax with internal link [MyHome]({{get_url("home")}}) rise an error.

So you have two options, you can embed in you markdown standard html such as <a href="{{get_url(\'home\')}}">My home page</a>, or use the default escape sequence to substitute quotes which is ^^ (two times caret) in get_url command. [MyHome]({{get_url(^^home^^)}})

Note

This mean that if you use the sequence "^^" in your pages it will be substituted with a single quote. I think that this is very unusual, but if you need you can change it with a sequence of your choice in the quote_escape variable of almoststatic.

Standard markdown syntax for links doesn’t let you to indicate the target, but python implementation with help of addr_list extension lets you to use this syntax:

[Flask](https://flask.palletsprojects.com){: target="_blank"}

Blog pages¶

Almoststatic has some blog capabilities.

Blog pages are ordinary pages rendered in the same way used for other pages.

The only difference is that them have the blog section which contain blog metadata used to group and search blog pages.

---
title: My page
author: Me

blog:
  image: blog/blog1.jpg
  show_image: true
  disabled: false
  intro: |
    some intro info
  tags: [blog, article]
  categories: [python, test]
  tag_order: { blog: 98 }
  categ_order: { python: 99, flask: 3 }

content:
  - type: text_html
    id: row1
    text: |
      ## My blog page

      This is a **Markdown** text

Blog section can contain:

key	value
image	image used as intro or to list blog pages
show_image	flag used to switch off image display
disabled	the page is excluded from blog metadata until is not ready
intro	a brief intro text describing the content of the article
tags	list of tags for the page
categories	list of categories of the page
tag_order	tags can be listed by priority and date
categ_order	categories can be listed by priority and date

Blog info are stored in metadata information which can be queried with the query_blog function to discover all pages with same categories or tags of the current page or to get arbitrary blog pages.

Note

Blog functions are easy and useful, but not that powerful. If you plan to write a blog with hundreds of pages, maybe Almoststatic is not the right solution, better chose not static system which can query databases.

Writing pages¶

Minimal page¶

Some extra contents¶

Widgets¶

Widgets fields¶

Widgets best practices¶

Markdown links¶

Blog pages¶

Almoststatic

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