Timestamp: #inst “2016-02-23T15:07:00+01:00” Title: “Basics” ID: basic-info

Basic Information

This page gives an overview of how λ-blog works internally. Let’s jump straight in:

λ-blog is a modular design with emphasis on hackability & customizability. There are three distinct phases of site generation in λ-blog:

• Content parsing - takes your content in a textual form and transforms it into a set of Entities that represent it in a convenient for processing way.

• Generation - is a pipeline of multiple Middleware functions that transform your Entities in various useful ways.

• Templating - is the final phase which results in HTML documents being generated; it uses an HTML templating engine.

The following sections contain short descriptions of mentioned concepts as well as pointers to more in-depth documentation.

Entities

Every phase processes Entities in one way or another. Entities are simple nested Clojure data structures, such as maps and vectors, that are convenient for processing. The definition is intentionally left vague, giving you the most freedom of expression. A more detailed description can be found here.

Content parsers

Content parsers take your data in a given format (be it Markdown or any format you wish to implement, for instance, git commit history) and coerce it to Entities. More details can be found here.

Generation pipeline

Generation pipeline is a multi-step process which transforms your Entities one Middleware at a time. Experimentation is encouraged. More details are available here.

Generaton middleware

Generation middleware are simple functions that modify your Entities in arbitrary ways. Again, experimentation is encouraged. More details are available here.

HTML templates

HTML templates are responsible for the actual generation. They produce HTML documents and can easily be customized to your liking. More info here.