Crystal

A Lispy static site generator using Spinneret, Lass, and Markdown.

Table of Contents

1. Overview
2. Installation
3. Usage
4. Project Structure
5. Deployment
6. Links
7. Patches
8. License

Overview

Crystal is a simple static site generator that aims to be quite Lispy. Both pages and styles are expressed in Common Lisp DSLs, while blog posts can be written in Markdown.

While Crystal supports arbitrary stylesheets and static assets, it doesn't ship with any themes; the assumption is that a Crystal user is also interested in designing her own website. This could change over time, however.

Installation

Crystal is available on Ultralisp and is easy to install using Quicklisp.

Add the Ultralisp repository:

CL-USER> (ql-dist:install-dist "http://dist.ultralisp.org/")

Install Crystal:

CL-USER> (ql:quickload :crystal)

Usage

Create a new Crystal website like this:

CL-USER> (require :crystal)

CL-USER> (crystal:init "~/new-website/")

Now, a new website skeleton resides in ~/new-website/.

Make ASDF aware of it, e.g. on Linux:

$ ln -s ~/new-website ~/.local/share/common-lisp/source/

You'll subsequently work on this new website.

CL-USER> (require :new-website)

Generating and previewing the new website is straightforward:

CL-USER> (new-website:generate)

CL-USER> (new-website:start-preview)

Then direct a web browser to http://localhost:5000.

The preview may be shut down with:

CL-USER> (new-website:stop-preview)

Project Structure

The contents of a Crystal website created by crystal:init live in the site directory.

Pages are written using Spinneret and reside in site/pages.lisp. Each page template is a Common Lisp function that returns a string containing HTML5.

Blog posts are optional and reside in site/posts/. Posts are written using Markdown.

Static assets such as images, fonts, and the like reside in site/static/; any subdirectory structure may be used for static assets. Stylesheets are written using Lass and reside in site/styles/. Here, no subdirectories are expected.

The site structure is specified in site/config.lisp:

(page-routes
  ("/" index)
  ("/about/" about))

(static-routes-prefix "/static/")
(styles-routes-prefix "/styles/")

(post-routes-prefix "/posts/")
(post-template post)

Routes are declared with the page-routes macro. A route consists of a path and a symbol naming a page template function. The post-template macro takes a symbol naming a page template function; Markdown is passed into this template when each post is generated. The other macros specify path prefixes for various assets after the site is generated.

Deployment

A Crystal website's generated output resides in www.

Deployment is as simple as copying the contents of that directory to a remote host.

Links

• Repository

Patches

Patches are welcome.

License

Crystal is licensed under the two-clause BSD license.

See LICENSE.