Scribanter

Overview

Scribanter is a standalone tool which serves as a lightweight wrapper around Scriban, designed to make static content generation from JSON models and Scriban templates simple and code-free. With Scribanter, you can:

• Generate static HTML pages (or any text-based content) directly from JSON data models.
• Batch process multiple templates and outputs
• Include reusable template components like headers and footers.
• Process single templates via command-line arguments or handle batch processing with a .job file.

Why Scribanter?

Existing static site generators can be complex, requiring significant setup and coding. Scribanter reduces the boilerplate by leveraging Scriban and providing an easy-to-use CLI interface. All you need is:

• One or more .scriban templates (see Syntax Guide).
• A .json model containing your data. [Optional]
• A .job file to handle batch processing [Optional].

Getting Started

Installation

You have two options for getting started:

Option 1: Download the binaries

1. Go to the GitHub Releases page.
2. Download the latest binaries and extract them.

Option 2: Build from source

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone --recursive https://github.com/yourusername/scribanter.git
   cd scribanter

   Or, if you've already cloned without --recursive, run:

   git submodule update --init --recursive

2. For the best experience, open the repository using Visual Studio Code. This allows the project to be initialised, built and tested via pre-configured tasks.

3. Run the init task to set everything up.

4. Run the build task to compile the tool and tests.

Usage

Scribanter uses a simple CLI interface:

scribanter --model path/to/model.json --template path/to/template.scriban --output path/to/output.html

Examples

Basic Usage

Render a simple template:

scribanter --template path/to/template.scriban \
           --output path/to/output.txt

Using JSON Models

Feed a JSON model into the template:

scribanter --model path/to/animals.json \
           --template path/to/print_animals.scriban \
           --output path/to/print_animals.txt

Template Includes

Example of including templates and optionally passing in parameters:

{{ include "Header.scriban" title: "My Page Title" }}

Some interesting content.

{{ include "Footer.scriban" }}

Built-in Template Values

Scribanter provides a couple of built-in values you can access directly from within your templates:

{{ TEMPLATE_PATH }}      # Path to the template file
{{ TEMPLATE_FILENAME }}  # Name of the template file with extension
{{ TEMPLATE_NAME }}      # Name of the template file without extension

Path Usage

A few things to note regarding paths:

• Paths passed directly on commandline should be absolute, or relative to the CWD
• Paths used within job files should be absolute, or relative to the .job file
• Paths used in template includes should be absolute or relative to the root template

Job Files (Optional)

For batch processing, use a .job file to describe inputs and outputs. Job files are executed as follows:

scribanter --job path/to/some.job

Example 1

Single task, single items (no data model).

{
  "tasks": [
    {
      "items": [
        {
         "template": "Templates/Basic1.scriban",
         "output": "Output/Basic1.txt"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Example 2

Single task, multiple items, shared data model.

{
  "tasks": [
     {
       "model": "Cars.json",
       "items": [
         {
          "template": "Templates/PrintCars1.scriban",
          "output": "Output/CarsA.txt"
         },
         {
          "template": "Templates/PrintCars2.scriban",
          "output": "Output/CarsB.txt"
         }
       ]
     },
  ]
}

Example 3

Multiple tasks (multiple data models).

{
  "tasks": [
    {
      "model": "CarsA.json",
      "items": [
        {
          "template": "Templates/PrintCars.scriban",
          "output": "Output/CarsA.txt"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "model": "CarsB.json",
      "items": [
        {
          "template": "Templates/PrintCars.scriban",
          "output": "Output/CarsB.txt"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Example 4

Single task, multiple items, shared data model, now with common template and output folders.

{
  "tasks": [
    {
      "template-dir": "Templates",
      "output-dir": "Output",
      "model": "Cars.json",
      "items": [
        {
          "template": "PrintCars1.scriban",
          "output": "Cars1.txt"
        },
        {
          "template": "PrintCars2.scriban",
          "output": "Cars2.txt"
        }
      ]
    },
  ]
}

Contributing

Feel free to fork the project and open pull requests with improvements or new features.

License

MIT

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Happy templating with Scribanter! 🚀