Run Cheap Static Site Generator (SSG)

This is a barebones django "app" (i.e. plugin) that you can use to generate static sites from your django views and templates.

I wrote this as an alternative to Jekyll for folks who are more used to using Django's template system.

How to use

First, install the django app (the only dependency is django).

python3 -m pip install runcheap-ssg

Next, add runcheap_ssg to your INSTALLED_APPS list in your settings.py. This enables management commands for building the static site and some helpful template filters.

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    "runcheap_ssg",
]

Next, update the views in your urls.py to use include_in_ssg.

from django.urls import path, re_path
from django.conf.urls.i18n import i18n_patterns
from django.views.generic.base import TemplateView
from runcheap_ssg.decorators import include_in_ssg
from my_website.views import landing_view, BlogEntryView, favicon_view, robots_view

# works with translated pages
i18n_urlpatterns = i18n_patterns(
    # works with simple views and default paths
    path("", include_in_ssg(landing_view), name="landing"),
    # works with class-based views and regex paths
    re_path(r"^about/$", include_in_ssg(TemplateView.as_view(template_name="about.html")), name="about"),
    # works with url parameters
    # (set parameters for each page to generate with `ssg_reverse_iter` kwarg)
    path(
        "blog/",
        include_in_ssg(
            TemplateView.as_view(template_name="about.html", extra_context={"entries": BlogEntryView.entries})
        ),
        name="blog_list",
    ),
    path(
        "blog/<slug:slug>/",
        include_in_ssg(
            BlogEntryView.as_view(),
            # generates one page per entry (i.e. `reverse("blog_entry", kwargs={"slug": "..."})`)
            ssg_reverse_iter=[{"kwargs": {"slug": entry["slug"]}} for entry in BlogEntryView.entries],
        ),
        name="blog_entry",
    ),
)

# works other types of pages
urlpatterns = i18n_urlpatterns + [
    # works with non-internationalized pages
    path("non-i18n/", include_in_ssg(TemplateView.as_view(template_name="non-i18n.html")), name="non-i18n"),
    # works with non-html files
    path("favicon.ico", include_in_ssg(favicon_view), name="favicon_ico"),
    # works with views that use @include_in_ssg decorator (so don't have to use it in the urls.py)
    path("robots.txt", robots_view, name="robots_txt"),
    # this view isn't wrapped by include_in_ssg(), so won't be included in the static build
    path("not-included/", TemplateView.as_view(template_name="not_included.html"), name="not_included"),
]

You can also use @include_in_ssg as a decorator in your views.

# ...in your myapp/views.py
from runcheap_ssg.decorators import include_in_ssg
...
@include_in_ssg
def robots_view(request):
    return FileResponse(open(finders.find("robots.txt"), "rb"))

Finally, you can generate your site as a set of static files using the built-in command (views that don't inherit from StaticTemplateView or StaticFileView are ignored).

python3 manage.py runcheap_ssg_build --output "_build"

Your static site is now rendered in ./_build/! Hooray!

Additionally, if you want to test your static site, there's a built-in server.

python3 manage.py runcheap_ssg_serve

Examples

Check out the examples folder of this repository to see example django projects that use Run Cheap SSG.