bloggy

Small and lightweight blog engine for node.js.

The main tasks of Bloggy are:

• search all meta.json files in a content directory (see Folder Structure)
• build an index of this information
• allow access to this index by the blog engine

Bloggy contains a simple plugin system to extend the engine with more functionality (e.g.: RSS generation, query functions, ...). Bloggy itself is not responsible to render to output, but you can easily integrate it in your express infrastructure.

Dear developers

Feel free to write plugins for it or to send pull requests. The code is checked with jslint and tested with mocha. You can use the grunt task to generate the code coverage. Just enter grunt at the command prompt. During coding you can use grunt watch, which executes the tests every time you save a file.

Resources:

• Mocha and should.js
• Code style guide

Do you need a hint how bloggy could be integrated in your web site? Then take a look at the code samples!

Folder structure

The blog content has to use the following folder structure.

• content
  • 2013-11-21-18-30
    • meta.json
    • content.md (Filename can be overridden. See Quickstart below.)
  • 2013-12-8-9-45
    • meta.json
    • content.md (Filename can be overridden. See Quickstart below.)
  • ...

The folder names below the main "content" folder are used as identifier and publishing date of the article. Use the format "year-month-day-hour-minute".

Metadata (meta.json)

{
    "longTitle": "Title of the blog entry",
    "shortTitle": "entry1",
    "tags": ["tech", "node", "markdown"]
}

• The longTitle and shortTitle has to be unique.
• The shortTitle can be used for a url shortener like functionality.
• The tags are case sensitive.
• Any other property you add here can be accessed at the BlogEntry (see below)
  • As long as you dont't use any of the reserved property names (id, entryPath, contentPath, metaPath, date, slug, tagNames, url, content)

Blog entry content (e.g. content.md)

This is the file with the blog entry content, which will be rendered to HTML by using a bloggy renderer plugin (e.g. http://github.com/marcells/bloggy-marked for markdown content).

The default filename is content.md. But you can change this name in the blog engine settings (see Quickstart below). So you get support for your editor (html, markdown, odt, doc, ...), cause you can define the file extension.

Quickstart

1. Install it

$ npm install bloggy

2. Configure it

var path = require('path'),
    bloggy = require('bloggy'),
    engine = bloggy();

// You may extend bloggy with some plugins (see 'Plugins' below)
engine.extendWith(require('bloggy-some-plugin'));

// Setup the paths to the blog content and the unique url to each entry.
// (E.g. you could define an additional path to unpublished blog posts when you are in your preview environment)
engine.setup({
    baseDirectories: [ path.join(__dirname, 'content') ],
    entryUrl: 'http://mspi.es/blog/{slug}',
    contentFilename: 'content.md' // The default value is 'content.md' and can be overridden here
});

3. Run it

// Load all blog metadata in the content folders defined in the baseDirectories option
engine.load(function () {
    // The engine is ready now
    // Run your web framework or do other stuff with it
});

Plugins

Bloggy gets its power from plugins. You want to see your awesome plugin down there in the list? Feel free to create one by yourself and notify me. If you need a template, just take a look at the currently existing ones.

Blog entry

The structure of a blog entry:

{
    id: '2014-10-04-20-30',
    entryPath: '/var/www/myblog/content/2014-10-04-20-30',
    contentPath: '/var/www/myblog/content/2014-10-04-20-30/content.md',
    metaPath: '/var/www/myblog/content/2014-10-04-20-30/meta.json',
    shortTitle: 'travisdeploy',
    longTitle: 'How to deploy to Travis-CI',
    url: 'http://mspi.es/blog/How-to-deploy-to-Travis-CI',
    date: new Date(2014, 09, 04, 20, 30),
    slug: 'How-to-deploy-to-Travis-CI',
    tags: [
        { name: 'tech', slug: 'tech'},
        { name: 'Continiuous Integration', slug: 'Continuous-Integration'}]
    content: '<h2>...</h2>' /* content is only available, when you have loaded it */
}

All additional properties, defined in the metadata, will occur here, too.

Every entry contains a load() method with callback, which is called after its content has been loaded. This content is cached as long as you hold a reference to this blog entry object.

entry.load(function () {
    var content = entry.content;
});

Engine functions

The engine contains the following functions.

Load the content of multiple entries

After executing, you have access to the content property of each entry.

engine.entries.load(entries, function() {
    entries.forEach(function (entry) {
        var content = entry.content;
    });
});

Extend the engine with additional functionality

Add plugins to the bloggy engine. The plugins could be configured. Please check the documentation in the several repos.

engine.extendWith(require('bloggy-query'));
engine.extendWith(require('bloggy-marked'));
engine.extendWith(require('bloggy-rss'));

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2014 Marcell Spies

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.