Writing a SSG in Go

Overview

Ever since I read this article Writing a Static Blog Generator in Go by @zupzup a few years ago, I've been wanting to do the same.

After not doing it for a few years just like a lot of things in my life rn, I finally gave it a try.

What I Created

Here is the core package(SSG)

K-Sato1995 / go-simple-ssg

Minimalistic SSG(Static Site Generator) in Go

What this is

Yet another SSG in Go. It's not intended to replace any existing SSGs. I created it as a learning exercise and really enjoyed the process.🤗

Heavily inspired by this blog post(Writing a Static Blog Generator in Go) by @zupzup.

Site I created using this

In case you are wondering how to use this, check out the Initialization process below.

Initialization

Install the cli.

go install github.com/K-Sato1995/go-simple-ssg/simple-ssg-cli@latest

run

simple-ssg-cli init

would create a new project that looks somethi ng like this.

./
├── contents/ (Stores markdown files)
├── templates/ (Stores template html files and style files)
├── generated/ (Stores generated files)
├── go.mod
├── go.sum
└── main.go

cd your project and just run

go run main.go

You should be able to see the site running on http://localhost:3001

Todo

CLI To run generating static contents based on the config file
- put all the code in one…

View on GitHub

and here is a static site I created using the ssg.

https://go-simple-ssg.vercel.app

Structure

The core package mainly consists of two parts

Generator: Generate static files based on Markdown and Templates(HTML) files.
CLI: Allows anyone to bootstrap a project.

The core packages looks like this

./
├── parser/ (Part that parses Markdown into HTML)
│ ├── mdToHTML.go
│ └── parseMetaData.go
├── builder/ (Part that generates static files based on the given md and templates)
│ ├── bundleCss.go
│ ├── copyStaticFiles.go
│ ├── generateDetail.go
│ └── generateList.go
├── simple-ssg-cli/ (CLI that allows anyone to bootstrap a project)
├─ example/
├── config/ (Part that makes the project custamizable for users)
└── engine.go

To use it, install the simple-ssg-cli and execute the init command.

$ go install github.com/K-Sato1995/go-simple-ssg/simple-ssg-cli@latest
$ simple-ssg-cli init

Doing this will create a new project with the following structure:

./
├── contents/ (Stores markdown files)
├── templates/ (Stores template html files and style files)
├── generated/ (Stores generated files)
├── go.mod
├── go.sum
└── main.go

Lastly, move to the newly created project and run it to build static contents and stuff.

$ cd your_project && go run main.go

Random Thoughts

Doing this made me appreciate existing SSGs like Hugo and Next.js even more👏👏

Blog

K-Sato