github-cms

Use your GitHub repositories as a content management system for your static site generator.

You can use this to provide markdown pages for your site if you are using anything like:

• Jekyll
• VuePress
• Gatsby
• Etc...

Installation

Install globally to just use the executable:

npm install -g github-cms
github-cms --help
github-cms <github_account> [destination_directory]

Install inside your static site generator project to add it to your build process:

npm install --save github-cms

In package.json:

"scripts": {
  "build": "github-cms <github_account> [destination_directory] && <your_normal_build_command>"
}

Usage

This tool will scan the public GitHub repositories associated to the provided account and will extract some data from them and save it locally as static files for your static site generator to use when building your site.

Saving as individual markdown files

By default, the tool will save one markdown file per repository found. The markdown file will contain a frontmatter section with basic details about the repository, followed by the contents of its README.md file.

Example:

---
title: supercoolrepo
description: >-
  This is the description you entered in the GitHub website about your repository.
url: "https://github.com/youraccount/supercoolrepo"
tags:
  - open-source
  - github
  - sample
---

# My super cool open source project

This software is very useful. Here's how to use it...

Saving as a collection in a single JSON file

Sometimes you might not want to create an individual page in your site for each of your repositories. Maybe you just want to list them on your site and display their short description, and place a link to the actual GitHub repository page. In those cases, you can use the --json option, and the tool will save a single JSON file with an array of repository entries with only their frontmatter data.

Example:

[
  {
    "title": "supercoolrepo",
    "description": "This is the description you entered in the GitHub website about your repository.",
    "url": "https://github.com/youraccount/supercoolrepo",
    "tags": ["open-source", "github", "sample"]
  },
  {
    "title": "github-cms",
    "description": "Use your GitHub repositories as a content management system for your static site generator.",
    "url": "https://github.com/operanditech/github-cms",
    "tags": ["cms", "github", "static-site-generator"]
  }
]

Repository logo images

github-cms also has support for specifying a logo image for each repository. The tool will download these images into the destination directory right next to the markdown files or the JSON file. The logo image files will be named using the name of each repo and the extension of the original image provided. Your static site generator can then use these files when bundling the built site.

There are three ways to specify a logo image for a repository. Each takes precedence over the previous one in this order:

• In the root directory of the repository, place a file named logo.png. Using this method, only the PNG extension is supported.
• In the root directory of the repository, place a file named <repository_name>.png. Using this method, only the PNG extension is supported.
• Specify any other image file in your repository using the config file, by specifying a logo entry in the custom frontmatter data. Read more about using config files below.

Configuration file

You can override the default frontmatter data about a repository by placing a config file in its root directory. This config file can also add new fields to the frontmatter data that will be merged with the default ones.

The config file should be named .github-cms.md and it should contain frontmatter data at the start, and optionally some markdown content after it.

The frontmatter data will be merged with the defaults and allows you to override things like the location of the logo image file in your repository, or the desired title of the page, description, tags, etc.

If there is any markdown content after the frontmatter data in the file, it will be used as the content for the generated page instead of the README.md file of the repository.

Filtering repositories

The tool also provides a --filter option to make it only create pages for the repositories that contain a .github-cms.md config file in their root directory.

Using github-cms as a library

You can also import this tool as a library and use it programatically in your code:

const loadGithubContent = require("github-cms");
// or
import loadGithubContent from "github-cms";

// Load repository content into static pages in a new directory
const account = "operanditech";
const directory = "projects";
// Optional parameters:
const filter = false;
const json = false;
const verbose = false;

await loadGithubContent(account, directory, filter, json, verbose);

Contributing

Please submit an issue if you:

• Encounter any bug
• Have a feature suggestion
• Have any questions

Pull requests are welcome!