dat-ssg

dat-ssg is a command line tool that uses configuration in a folder to download websites with wget and publish the content to:

• netlify
• dat
• ... (your Pull Request)

Why?

Prior to dat-ssg, to host a website on dat you can either edit it by hand or setup a static site generator and a CI system to do the publishing. This, however, prevents the use of any cms. Be it Ghost, Wordpress , Drupal or any other dynamic publishing system. With dat-ssg you can finally start using those systems and host the site to be accessible through dat.

It is also quite useful if you want to use cheaper static-site hosting that deploys well in a global cdn.

Introduction

For dat-ssg you need to have two folders: the _"configuration-folder" and the "work-folder".

• The configuration-folder can have a list of configuration files, each specifying a download process of files.
• The work-folder will be holding a folder for every file in the configuration folder and the .out and .error files for the process of each configuration.

dat-ssg needs wget and git available in the command line. wget is used to download the site, git is used to only trigger a publication if the site has changed.

dat-ssg will rewrite the downloaded files (e.g. the meta tags and links) to look correct when hosted on the target.

Installation

dat-ssg is a node application and can be run quickly using

$ npx dat-ssg --work-folder ./work --configuration-folder ./config

The process will look for any changes in the configuruation folder and start a process for each file.

Configuration files

For configuration you can simply add a file with the ending .js to the configuration folder.

The file needs to export a javascript object looking like this:

module.exports = {
  title: "My Site", // Title to be used in the process, e.g. for the dat config file
  description: "This is my homepage", // Description used for the process, e.g. for the dat config file
  domain: "mydomain.com", // domain to download data from
  https: true, // The domain support https
  newDomain: "https://targetdomain.org", // domain of the new site (needed for content-rewrites)
  /*
   * wget will download all files that are found at the domain's root but there may be extra roots to look for content.
   * You need to specify all the roots 
   */
  roots: [
    "/",
    "/b.html",
    "/c.html"
  ],
  notFound: '/404/', // Adds '/404/ to the roots and adds 404 configuration to the deployments (netlify, dat,...)
  // Interval to look for updates
  update: 1000 * 60 * 20, // Update every 10 minutes
  // The process will use following user name to make commits
  git: {
    email: "my@domain.com",
    name: "The Name"
  },
  // If you want to publish the page to netlify you need to specify this property, else you can skip it!
  netlify: {
    siteId: "aaaaaaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaa", // Id, provided in the netlify setup
    production: false, // Publish as production = true, else = false
    /*
     * Auth token as provided through the netlify user interface, can be also loaded through `process.env`
     */
    authToken: "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa",
    config: `# Optional configuration, see https://docs.netlify.com/configure-builds/file-based-configuration/#sample-file`
  },
  dat: {
    // Time to push after changes, in which a hosting service can connect and download the latest update.
    pushTime: 1000 * 60 * 2 // 2 minutes
  }
}

Every time you change the file, the process will be restarted and a deploy will be triggered.

Caching notes

Some CMS add query parameters to javascript or css links, e.g.: assets/main/css/main.css?v=25be6de7e6 These files will be transformed with wget to: assets/main/css/main.css@v=25be6de7e6.css.

You may want to specify the cache settings in netlify.config to cache the files "forever":

[[headers]]
  for = "/*@v=*"
  [headers.values]
    cache-control = "public, max-age=31536000"

DAT notes

The first time a configuration is fetched will create a new dat in the workfolder. This new dat will have a new link, so every time you delete the folder, you will need to update replication links and the links you used in your dat-dns settings.

Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme within the framework of the LEDGER Project funded under grant agreement No825268.

License

MIT