From: patrick-may@... (Patrick May)
Date: 2002-03-20T06:40:49+09:00
Subject: Re: web templating for static sites?

Massimiliano Mirra <list@chromatic-harp.com> wrote in message news:<20020319153126.B3694@prism.localnet>...

> This is a really cool idea, but the very reason I choose static pages
> is that I don't have a server to install stuff on and manage to my
> heart's content.

You can also instantiate the eruby parser in ruby:

def compile_eruby (template_filename)
  File.open (template_filename, "r") { |template|
    compiler = ERuby::Compiler.new
    code = compiler.compile_file(template)
  }
  code
end

If you do this within a page object:

class Page
  @template = "path/to/template"
  def to_html
    eval( compile_eruby(@template) )
  end
end

Then the code in the template gets eval'd in the scope of the page,
and can access the pages information!  Tailering the page abstraction
to the site, building a save / load functions for the page, you can
see where this goes.

Pretty lightweight, you're in control of your object hierarchy, and
you still get to use a templating solution for the mostly html bits.

~ Patrick