Frank
Inspired by Sinatra's simplicity and ease of use, Frank lets you build static sites using your favorite libs. Frank has a built in development server for previewing work as you develop, an "export" command for compiling and saving your work out to static html and css, and a publish command for copying your exported pages to a server.
Frank uses Tilt, so it comes with support for Haml & Sass, LESS, Builder, ERB, and Liquid.
Overview
Create a new project with:
$ frank new <project_path>
Then cd <project_path> and start up the server with:
$ frank server
-----------------------
Frank's holdin' it down...
0.0.0.0:3601
And you're ready to get to work. By default, dynamic templates are served from the dynamic folder,
static files are served from the static folder, and layouts are served from the layouts folder.
When you're done working:
$ frank export <export_dir>
to compile templates and copy them--along with static your assets--into <export_dir> (or to export/ if you don't specify an <export_dir>).
Or,
$ frank export --production <export_dir>
to compile & copy over, but organized to work as a static website in production. (e.g. folders named after your views, with an index.html inside)
You can add publish settings in setup.rb and publish directly to a server via scp.
$ frank publish
Upgrading
As of version 0.4, Frank no longer uses settings.yml. However you can use frank upgrade in order convert your old settings.yml to the new setup.rb format.
Frank Templates
Frank (as of 1.0) has support for saving "templates" in ~/.frank_templates. This is very handy if find yourself wanting a custom starting point. All you have to do to use the feature is create a ~/.frank_templates folder and start putting templates in it.
Once you have a few templates saved, when you run frank new <project_path> you'll be presented with a list of templates to choose from as the starting point for the project.
Views & Meta Data
All of your templates, less, sass &c. go into <project>/dynamic by default.
You can organize them into subfolders if you've got lots.
Views
Writing views is simple. Say you've got a blog.haml in <project>/dynamic; just browse over to
http://0.0.0.0:3601/blog and your view will be parsed and served up as html.
Meta Data
Frank was designed to make controllers unnecessary. But, sometimes it's nice to have variables in your templates / layouts. This is particularly handy if you want to set the page title (in the layout) according to the view. This is simple, now, with meta data.
Meta fields go at the top of any view, and are written in YAML. To mark the end
of the meta section, place the meta delimeter, META---, on a blank line. You can
use as many hyphens as you'd like (as long as there are 3).
Meta fields are then available as local variables to all templating languages that support them--in the view & layout:
view:
title: My Rad Page
author: My Rad Self
---------------------------------------------META
%h1= title
%h3= 'By ' + author
layout:
%title= title + '--My Rad Site'
Layouts (updated in 0.3)
Layouts are also simple with Frank. Create a default.haml (or .rhtml, etc.),
in the layouts folder, and include a yield somewhere therein; views using the
layout will be inserted there.
Namespacing Layouts
You can namespace your layouts using folders:
- When rendering a view--
dynamic_folder/blog/a-blog-post.haml, - Frank would first look for the layout
layouts/blog/default.haml, - and if not found use fall back on
layouts/default.haml
Multiple/No Layouts
Frank also supports choosing layouts on a view-by-view basis via meta data. Just add a
layout meta field:
layout: my_layout.haml
---------------------------------------------META
%h1 I'm using my_layout.haml instead of default.haml!
or if you don't want a layout at all:
layout: nil
---------------------------------------------META
%h1 No layout here!
Partials & Helpers
Frank comes with a helper method, render_partial, for including partials
in your views.
You can also add your own helper methods easily.
Partials
To create a partial, make a new file like any of your other views, but prefix its name with an underscore.
For example, if I have a partial named _footer.haml, I can include this
in my Haml views like this:
= render_partial 'footer'
You can also send local variables to partials like this:
= render_partial 'footer', :local_variable_name => 'some_value'
Helpers
Helper methods are also easy. Just open up helpers.rb and add your methods
to the FrankHelpers module; that's it. Use them just like render_partial.
Built-in Helpers
Auto-Refresh
Frank has a handy automatic page refreshing helper. Just include = refresh
(or equivalent) in your view, and Frank will automatically refresh the page for you whenever you
save a project file. This eliminates the tedium of hundreds of manual refreshes over the course
of building a project.
When it's time export with frank export, Frank will leave out the JavasScript bits of the refresher.
Current Path
Frank now has a current_path variable that you can use to set selected states on nav items.
It will return the path info from the template being processed. You also, have access to the variable from layouts and from the frank export command.
Placeholder Text
You can easily generate dummy text like so:
%p= lorem.sentences 3
This will return 3 sentences of standard Lorem Ipsum. lorem also has all of the following methods for generating dummy text:
lorem.sentence # returns a single sentence
lorem.words 5 # returns 5 individual words
lorem.word
lorem.paragraphs 10
lorem.paragraph
lorem.date # accepts a strftime format argument
lorem.name
lorem.first_name
lorem.last_name
lorem.email
Placeholder Images
Frank now uses placehold.it for placeholder images, the lorem.image helper supports background_color, color, random_color, and text options:
lorem.image('300x400') #=> http://placehold.it/300x400
lorem.image('300x400', :background_color => '333', :color => 'fff') #=> http://placehold.it/300x400/333/fff
lorem.image('300x400', :random_color => true) #=> http://placehold.it/300x400/f47av7/9fbc34d
lorem.image('300x400', :text => 'blah') #=> http://placehold.it/300x400&text=blah
Replacement Text
All of the lorem helpers accept an optional "replacement" argument. This will be the text rendered when you frank export.
For example lorem.sentence("<%= page.content %>") will generate a lorem sentence when you view the page using the frank server for development.
However, when you frank export the template will render "<%= page.content %>". This is useful if you plan on moving a frank project
into a framework. (e.g. rails, sinatra, django, etc)
Configuration
In setup.rb, you can change your folder names, and server port & host name.
Check the comments there if you need help.
Installation
$ gem install frank
Contributors (in no particular order)
- railsjedi (Jacques Crocker)
- asymmetric (Lorenzo Manacorda)
- timmywil (timmywil)
- sce (Sten Christoffer Eliesen)
- btelles (Bernie Telles)
- mitchellbryson (Mitchell Bryson)
- nwah (Noah Burney)