connect-blog

Blog middleware you can add to your Connect/Express app, uses a directory of static files.

Synopsis

var connectBlog = require('connect-blog');

var blog = connectBlog({
    domain : 'example.com',
});

// later on
app.get('/', blog);
app.get('/:path', blog);

This example will serve this blog at the root level of the example.com domain. You must set both / and /:path so that we can determine in the middleware whether to show the index page or something else. The /:path parameter must also be called path, not anything else.

What is connect-blog

'connect-blog' is middleware for Express/Connect. It can read a directory full of static *.md and *.json files and then serve up a blog for you. Each post should consist of two files.

Imagine a post called my-first-post. Therefore, you require:

• my-first-post.md
• my-first-post.json

(Note: you can also use *.textile or *.html files for the content, or *.ini or *.yaml files for the meta data about the post.)

Once 'connect-blog' has read those files in, it will create a structure similar to the following:

{
    name    : 'my-first-post',
    content : ' ... the markdown from the *.md file ... ',
    html    : ' ... the HTML from the MarkDown conversion ... ',
    meta    : {
        // then entire data read from the *.json file
    }
}

By keeping to this structure, 'connect-blog' knows where to find everything. An example *.json file would be:

{
    "title" : "My First Post",
    "date"  : "2013-10-04T02:02:17.516Z",
    "tags"  : [ "css", "html5", "javascript", "app" ]
}

Please note that the published time of the post comes from the date field and it must be parseable by new Date(date). The year and month of that date is also used in the archive. The date is used in all templates (index, post, archive, tag) and the feeds (RSS, Atom). The tags are used for the tagging posts and in the tagcloud template. (Of course, you need to write the templates yourself so this could change.)

You can add in any other data you like this *.json file that you may need in the templates related to each post.

A default post is set up once either of these files are read. The default post looks like:

var now = new Date();
var nowMoment = moment(now);
{
    name : '...', // same as the filename, e.g. basename.json or basename.md
    meta : {
        title     : basename.split(/-/).map(function(str) { return str.substr(0, 1).toUpperCase() + str.substr(1); }).join(' '),
        date      : now,
        moment    : nowMoment,
        year      : nowMoment.format('YYYY'),
        month     : nowMoment.format('MM'),
        day       : nowMoment.format('DD'),
        monthname : nowMoment.format('MMMM'),
        category  : 'general',
        tags    : [],
    },
    content : '',
    html    : '',
}

This default post is set so that if you just have basename.md and no basename.json, then the blog will still render and not throw errors. Same if you have basename.json but not basename.md (but that wouldn't be much good either). Basically anything to stop it crashing, however you should check that your blog is being rendered as you want it prior to publishing.

Synopsis

To set up a blog from within Express, try this:

var blog = require('connect-blog');

var blog = connectBlog({
    title       : 'CSS Minifier Blog',
    description : 'The CSS Minifier Blog, for All Your Minifying Needs!',
    contentDir  : fs.joinPath('/', __dirname, 'blog'),
    domain      : 'cssminifier.com',
    basePath    : '/blog',
});

app.get( '/blog/',      blog );
app.get( '/blog/:path', blog );

This will serve the following pages:

/blog/                       - renders the 'blog-index' template
/blog/rss20.xml              - creates a RSS 2.0 XML file
/blog/atom.xml               - creates an Atom XML file
/blog/archive                - renders 'blog-archive' template
/blog/archive-<year>         - renders 'blog-archive' template
/blog/archive-<year>-<month> - renders 'blog-archive' template
/blog/tag                    - renders 'blog-tagcloud' template
/blog/tag-<tag-name>         - renders 'blog-tag' template
/blog/<post-name>            - renders 'blog-post' template

Each template gets access to the following variables:

• title - the 'title' you passed in when setting the blog up
• posts - a chronological array of all posts
• pages - all the posts split up into pages (using opts.indexCount)
• latest - a reversed list of the latest 10 posts (defined by opts.latestCount)
• tagged - an object of each tag, each containing an array of posts
• archive - an object of year numbers, each an object of month numbers, each an array of posts

e.g.

title  = opts.title;
posts  = [ ...posts... ];
latest = [ ...posts... ];
tagged = {
    tag1 : [ ...posts... ],
    tag2 : [ ...posts... ],
    tag3 : [ ...posts... ],
};
archive = {
    '2013' : {
        '01' : [ ...posts ... ],
        '02' : [ ...posts ... ],
        '03' : [ ...posts ... ],
    },
    '2012' : {
        '08' : [ ...posts ... ],
        '09' : [ ...posts ... ],
        '10' : [ ...posts ... ],
    },
};

Default Options

The default options have reasonable (not necessarily sensible) defaults for each of these keys, so the only onw you MUST provide is the domain.

var defaults = {
    title                : 'Blog',
    description          : '',
    contentDir           : 'blog',
    indexCount           : 10,
    latestCount          : 20,
    basePath             : '',
    indexTemplate        : 'blog-index',
    postTemplate         : 'blog-post',
    tagAllTemplate       : 'blog-tag-all',
    tagOneTemplate       : 'blog-tag-one',
    archiveAllTemplate   : 'blog-archive-all',
    archiveYearTemplate  : 'blog-archive-year',
    archiveMonthTemplate : 'blog-archive-month',
};

So, to go with defaults you can just call:

var blogMiddleware = connectBlog({ domain : 'example.com' });

Routes

When a route is rendered it is called as follows so that it is independent of whatever template language you have already set up.

res.render('blog-post');

The /rss20.xml and /atom.xml do not call a template since the XML is generated within the middleware. They only look at the opts originally passed in to create the middleware and the latest variable.

Blog Index

Page     : /
Template : 'blog-index'
Locals   : (none)

Archive Index

Page     : /archive
Template : 'blog-archive'
Locals   : title -> opts.title + ' Archive'
         : thisArchive -> archive

Year Archive

Page     : /archive-<year>
Template : 'blog-archive'
Locals   : title -> opts.title + ' Archive'
         : thisArchive -> archive[year]

Month Archive

Page     : /archive-<year>-<month>
Template : 'blog-archive'
Locals   : title -> opts.title + ' Archive'
         : thisArchive -> archive[year][month]

Tag Index

Page     : /tag
Template : 'blog-tagcloud'
Locals   : title -> opts.title + ' TagCloud'

Specific Tag

Page     : /tag-<name>
Template : 'blog-tag'
Locals   : title -> opts.title + ' : ' + tag
         : thesePosts -> tagged[tag]
         : thisTagName -> tag

Post

Page     : /<post-name>
Template : 'blog-post'
Locals   : title -> post.meta.title
         : thisPost -> post[postName]

Author

Written by Andrew Chilton - Twitter - GitHub.

License

• Copyright 2013 Andrew Chilton. All rights reserved.

(Ends)