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https://github.com/appyay/jen

Jen is a lightweight Javascript library for rapid development of static websites
https://github.com/appyay/jen

gulp jen json-data lightweight-javascript-library modular nunjucks pagination static-site-generator

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Jen is a lightweight Javascript library for rapid development of static websites

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# Jen



> Jen is a lightweight Javascript library for rapid development of static websites. It was built with a focus on ease of use for developers and working seamlessly with headless APIs and static website hosting.



This project was originally conceived to enable producing a static website from an existing HTML template an easy and intuitive process.



## How does it work?

Jen leverages Mozilla's rich and powerful [Nunjucks](https://mozilla.github.io/nunjucks/) templating language together with Gulp tasks to manage project template files and generate a public directory. Data for the application is retrieved from a JSON data file in the project, making it especially suitable for building API driven websites. The data file can be populated on-demand during development or on-build for in-production static websites.



Aside from Nunjucks and Gulp, Jen is completely unopinionated about what technologies are used, putting the control in the hands of the developer. 



A starter project for Jen is available here: [Jen Starter](https://github.com/appyay/jen-starter). The build process for this project includes:

* Sass preprocessing

* Nunjucks/HTML for templating

* CSS concatenation and minification

* Javascript concatenation and uglification

* Multi-browser live browser reload

* Master-detail pattern with pagination

* A modular, reusable design



## Installation

Install the dependencies:

````

npm install

````



## Project setup

First, create a ```gulpfile.js``` in the root of your project and include the following:



### Require the dependencies:

````

const gulp = require('gulp');

require('jen')(gulp, {

  dataUrl: process.env.DATA_URL

});

````

If there is a DATA_URL specified, Jen will use it to retrieve data.



### Development Gulp task:

````

gulp.task(

  'default',

  gulp.series('jen:dev') //include other gulp tasks as you wish

);

````



### Build Gulp task:

````

gulp.task('build', gulp.series('jen:build'));

````



### Project structure

Jen assumes the following project structure:

````

|--src // required

    |--data // required, but folder and contents will be auto-generated if you supply a dataUrl

        |--db.json // required

    |--templates //required

        |--pages //required

            |--home //required. This is the homepage folder. Other pages can be added in the same manner

                |--index.html //required

|--gulpfile.js // required

````



### Load the data

Data can be loaded in three ways:

1. Manually add a JSON data file to the data folder.

2. Load remote data by running ````gulp jen:load --dataUrl 'http://example.com/api/whatever'````

3. Load remote data and build the project by running ````gulp jen:build````



## Running for development

````

gulp jen:dev

````



## Master-detail pattern

Jen enables facilitation of the master-detail pattern (i.e. a list pages and accompanying detail pages for each list item).



### Detail templates

If your website requires use of the master-detail pattern, you can achieve this by putting a "detail" folder inside your page folder. For example:

````

...

        |--pages

        ...

            |--blog // page folder

                |--detail

                    |--index.html // this is your detail template

                |--index.html //this is your list (master) template

...

````

So, if a blog entry has an ID of "abc123", the detail page would be accessible at:

````

/blogs/abc123

````



The item for display on the detail page can be accessed through the ```jen.item``` global variable (only available on detail pages).



### List (master) templates

The list template will be the ```index.html``` file in the root of the page folder. The items to needed to form the list can be accessed through the global ```jen.db``` variable. For example, in your list template:



````

{% for feature in jen.db.features.items %}

  
{{feature.fields.title}}


{% endfor %}

````



#### Pagination

The following variables will be available in list templates for facilitating pagination of list items:

* jen.pagination.offset

* jen.pagination.currentPage

* jen.pagination.total

* jen.pagination.itemsPerPage



The default number of items per page is 50. To specify another value, pass it into Jen through the options object in ```gulpfile.js```:



````

const itemsPerPage = 20;

require('@richjava/jen')(gulp, {

  itemsPerPage: itemsPerPage

});

````



In your template, you can loop through items in a range like so:

````

{% for i in range(jen.pagination.offset, jen.pagination.offset + jen.pagination.itemsPerPage ) %}

    
{{db.features.items[i].fields.title}}


{% endfor %}

````



See the [Jen Starter](https://github.com/appyay/jen-starter) for an example of how to implement a pagination component and more!