I prefer the flexibility of PHP personally, but there’s pros and cons to everything. For example, I don’t really see how setting up 11ty is any easier than a 10 line build.php. Might as well keep it simple
I stripped out all the database stuff because as my site grew I kept expanding on it and I needed a database.
Mine will also probably be longer than average because I wanted fancy stuff like my source pages being just “about.php” instead of “about/index.php”, but I wanted the output to be “about/index.html” so it got way more complicated than it needed to be. But again most of those lines in the for loop are just me being obsessive compulsive about my own directory structure 😂. I also didn’t count the utilities functions in my original line count because to me that’s equivalent of importing a module; I didn’t write that file, I just copy pasted it from online. You could probably find a simpler build script online.
I prefer the flexibility of PHP personally, but there’s pros and cons to everything. For example, I don’t really see how setting up 11ty is any easier than a 10 line
build.php. Might as well keep it simpleI tried SSGs like 11ty, but they are overkill for simple things.
I’d be interested in the 10 line build.php. Care to share?
Sure, I’m typing it out on my phone though so excuse any mistakes:
Tap for build.sh
# build.sh php build.phpTap for build.php
// build.php <?php // Just contains all the directory definitions and utilities in one place require once __DIR__ . './bootstrap.php'; require once __DIR__ . './utils.php'; // Static assets ensureDir(DIST_DIR); copy_all_files(ASSETS_DIR, DIST_DIR); $files = new RecursiveIteratorIterator( new RecursiveDirectoryIterator(PAGES_DIR) ); // Build each page foreach ($files as $file) { if ($file->isDir()) continue; $path = $file->getPathname(); // only build .php pages (skip partials) if (!str_ends_with($path, '.php')) continue; $relative = str_replace('pages/', '', str_replace(SRC_DIR . '/', '', $path)); $output = str_replace('.php', '/index.html', $relative); echo $relative . "\n"; if ($relative == 'index.php') { $outputPath = DIST_DIR . '/index.html'; } else if (str_ends_with($output, 'index/index.html')) { $output = str_replace('index/index.html', 'index.html', $output); $outputPath = DIST_DIR . '/' . $output; } else { $outputPath = DIST_DIR . '/' . $output; } ensureDir(dirname($outputPath)); ob_start(); include $path; $html = ob_get_clean(); echo $outputPath . "\n"; file_put_contents($outputPath, $html); } echo "Build complete\n";Tap for utils.php
// utils.php function ensureDir($path) { if (!is_dir($path)) { mkdir($path, 0777, true); } } function copy_all_files($source_dir, $target_dir) { $dir_obj = opendir($source_dir); @mkdir($target_dir); while ($file = readdir($dir_obj)) { if ($file != "." && $file != "..") { if (is_dir($source_dir . "/" . $file)) { copy_all_files($source_dir . "/" . $file, $target_dir . "/" . $file); } else { copy($source_dir . "/" . $file, $target_dir . "/" . $file); } } } closedir($dir_obj); }Tap for bootstrap.php
<?php define('ROOT_DIR', __DIR__); define('DIST_DIR', ROOT_DIR . '/dist'); define('SRC_DIR', ROOT_DIR . '/src'); define('PAGES_DIR', SRC_DIR . '/pages'); // etcI stripped out all the database stuff because as my site grew I kept expanding on it and I needed a database.
Mine will also probably be longer than average because I wanted fancy stuff like my source pages being just “about.php” instead of “about/index.php”, but I wanted the output to be “about/index.html” so it got way more complicated than it needed to be. But again most of those lines in the for loop are just me being obsessive compulsive about my own directory structure 😂. I also didn’t count the utilities functions in my original line count because to me that’s equivalent of importing a module; I didn’t write that file, I just copy pasted it from online. You could probably find a simpler build script online.
Tap for example.php
<?php $pageTitle = 'Example'; ?> <!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <?php include PARTIALS_DIR . '/head.php'; ?> <link rel="stylesheet" href="/styles/example.css" /> </head> <body> <?php include PARTIALS_DIR . '/header.php'; ?> <?php include PARTIALS_DIR . '/noscript.php'; ?> <main> <h1>example</h1> </main> <?php include PARTIALS_DIR . '/footer.php'; ?> <?php include PARTIALS_DIR . '/global-scripts.php'; ?> </body> </html>Thank you very much. I’ll try to comprehend all this later, since I’m on the phone as well :)
PHP is additional vulnerability, while static html is bullet proof, as long as http server is safe and up to date.
How is PHP a vulnerability if it never leaves your machine and you only use it to build the HTML?
Oh, if you’re only using it to generate static html it’s of course safe. I would prefer minimal markdown for blogs, though.
I guess I just really like HTML. Any excuse to write actual HTML makes me happy