255BITS/giles

Giles wants you to stop writing HTML, CSS, and JS.

Giles is a static asset builder for a variety of useful markup languages. Use Giles to develop with nextgen web tools and increase project momentum.

##Giles supports

CoffeeScript - Incredible javascript compiler. Everything just seems to work better with coffeescript.
Stylus - Fantastic css compiler. The variable/mixin support is extremely powerful.
Jade - Cool HAML-like alternative to writing html.
Markdown - Markdown is the most intuitive markup language ever invented.
Your favorite language. Add it and issue a pull request.

###Giles is a command line tool and API for:

Developing. Watch a directory using the giles -s command, and build files as they are requested.
Releasing. Building static assets for deployment

The goal of Giles is not to advocate a specific framework, rather to provide developers and designers functionality in the languages of their choice.

###To install run

sudo npm install -g giles

npm is available by installing nodejs

To build static assets, recursively

giles

It will build every file into the same directory(views/index.jade will become views/index.html)

Giles ignores files that begin with '' (underscore). Use these for mixins, partials and etc. _

###To get help

giles -h

If you ever need to run this, file a bug with me.

To clean up

giles -c

This will remove all files where generation is possible - IE: it will remove layout.html if you have a layout.jade. Be safe out there!

###To ignore a directory, or multiple(will match recursively)

giles --ignore vendor,bin

ignore defaults to node_modules,.git

###To start a webserver on port 9000

giles -s -p 9000

-p is optional, and will default to 2255 if not specified

###Environments

Note the flag -e is deprecated in favor of the NODE_ENV environment variable.

Environments are shortcuts that allow you to treat compilations differently. giles defaults to null if unspecified.

NODE_ENV=production giles <dir>

Compile assets in in production mode.

Jade assets (and all compiled types that support local variables) can contain tests for the environment:

- if(environment == 'production')
  #prodOnly content

#API These examples are in coffeescript.

Building with .js and giles (works with Jake or Cake)

srcDir = PATH_TO_SOURCE
options = {}

giles = require('giles')
giles.build(srcDir, options)

To run the giles server

giles = require('giles')
giles.server(dir, {port : 12345})

Try it for a lightweight development mode

To use giles connect/express module

connect.use(giles.connect(srcDir))

This connector will compile supported file types (index.jade will be compiled when index.html is requested). It does not serve any files.

It is imperative that you place this before `connect.static'

Adding a custom route

By default giles creates a 1-1 map of template to generated page. This allows you to use the same jade file with separate variables to generate a dynamic page that is built into a finite amount of static targets.

#This generates static files with the output file dynamicPage.html
#locals is a list of variables available
#to the .jade file when running this action
locals = {name : "Martyn"}

giles.get '/dynamicPage.html', 'page.jade', locals

Then in page.jade

!!!
head
  title = name

To add a compiler to giles

coffee = require 'coffee-script'
giles.addCompiler ['.coffee', '.cs'], '.js', (contents, filename, output) ->
  output(coffee.compile(contents, {}))

Or for stylus

stylus = require 'stylus'
giles.addCompiler [".styl", ".stylus"], '.css', (contents, filename, output) ->
  stylus.render contents, {filename: filename}, (err, css) ->
    if err
      console.error "Could not render stylus file: "+filename
      console.error err
    else
      output(css)

Both of these compilers are already in giles and listed here for illustration purposes.

#Changelog

v0.5.6

Added mocha specs around connect module
Merged issue with mime types from mbarzda

v0.5.5

Added giles -q (--quiet)

v0.5.4

Added giles -c (--clean)

v0.5.3

Added markdown
Fixed a bug in coffeescript generation

v0.5.2

Added -v flag to output version number

v0.5.1

Added -e flag for environments
Documentation slightly updated

v0.5.0

Added giles.get("/route", sourceFile, locals) for defining generated files
Added -s option which tells giles to start a webserver on port 2255
Added -p option to specify port of -s
Removed -w option, -s works better and more consistently

###License Giles is available under the MIT license. We hope you find it useful. Please let us at 255 BITS know if you use it for something cool.

Into every generation a slayer is born: one girl in all the world, a Chosen One. One born with the strength and skill to fight the vampires, to stop the spread of their evil and swell of their numbers.

255BITS / giles