Copybara

Simple HTML preprocessor for static sites. Made specificaly for a personal website of mine.

Install

Copybara runs on Deno.

# install with deno install
deno install --allow-read --allow-write https://deno.land/x/copybara/copybara.ts

Run

# run with default arguments
copybara

# specify input and output
copybara -i src/template.html -o build/

# display help
copybara -h

Use

Copybara wraps HTML files with other HTML files. Let’s call them content files and templates.

The simplest usecase is to provide the same header and footer for every file. The template may look like this:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <title><!-- !cb-param title --> - Capybara Fan Club</title>
</head>
<body>
    
    <header>Welcome To The Capybara Lovers Community</header>

    <!-- !cb-wrap subpages -->

    <footer>Made with love</footer>

</body>
</html>

In this case we specified a title parameter (the word “title” is arbitrary) and the subpages directory for the cb-wrap command. This directory is where the content files are located. There may be any number of them. A sample content file:

<!-- !cb-param title "Fun Facts" -->
<h1>The cultural influence of capybaras</h1>
<h2>Currency</h2>
<p>The image of a capybara can be seen on a 2 Pesos Uruguay coin.</p>

This file sets the title parameter for itself as “Fun Facts”. The command can be placed anywhere in the file.

The file structure looks like this:

template.html
subpages/
--- article.html
--- about.html
--- adopt.html

If you run the command:

copybara -i template.html -o public

It will create the public directory so that the final structure looks like this:

template.html
subpages/
--- article.html
--- about.html
--- adopt.html
public/
--- subpages/
------- article.html
------- about.html
------- contact.html

The generated public/subpages/article.html file contains the following:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <title>Fun Facts - Capybara Fan Club</title>
</head>
<body>
    
    <header>Welcome To The Capybara Lovers Community</header>

    <!-- !cb-param title "Fun Facts" -->
    <h1>The cultural influence of capybaras</h1>
    <h2>Currency</h2>
    <p>The image of a capybara can be seen on a 2 Pesos Uruguay coin.</p>

    <footer>Made with love</footer>

</body>
</html>

The subpages/article.html file has been wrapped by template.html in place of the  command. Also, the title parameter declaration has been replaced by the title value set in the content file. The same has happened to all other files inside the subpages directory.

Command line

The following command line options are available:

Option	Alias	Default	Description
–input	-i	./src/template.html	The file to start processing from (the main template)
–out	-o	./out	The folder in which to put the processed files
–verbose	n/a	n/a	Logs more detailed information. Helpful for debugging
–help	-h	n/a	Displays the list of commands
–version	-v	n/a	Displays the used version