Silly is a filesystem based Object Document Mapper.
Use it to query a directory like you would a database -- useful for static websites.

Installation

Silly is in alpha which means the API is unstable and still under development. Silly is/will-be used to power ruhoh 3.0. You can contribute and help stablize Silly by playing with it and providing feedback!

Install and run the development (head) version:

$ [email protected]:ruhoh/silly.git

Take note of where you downloaded the gem.

Navigate to a directory you want to query.

Create a file named Gemfile with the contents:

gem 'silly', :path => '/Users/jade/Dropbox/gems/silly'

Make sure to replace the path with where you downloaded the gem.

Install the bundle:

$ bundle install

Usage

We can test the query API by loading an irb session loading Silly:

Load irb:

$ bundle exec irb

Load and instantiate silly relative to the current directory:

> require 'silly'
> query = Silly::Query.new
> query.append_path(Dir.pwd)

Data

Cascade

Append an arbitrary number of paths to enable a logical cascade where files overload one another of the same name.

query = Silly::Query.new
query.append_path(Dir.pwd)
query.append_path(File.join(Dir.pwd, "theme-folder"))

Data Files

Data files are automatically parsed and merged down the cascade:

Given:
  ./data.yml
  ./theme-folder/data.json

query = Silly::Query.new
query.append_path(Dir.pwd)
query.append_path("theme-folder")

query.where("$shortname" => "data").first

File metadata

Files have inherit metadata such as path, filename, extension etc. Files can also define arbitrary in-file "top metadata" or FrontMatter made popular by static site generators like Jekyll.

page.html

---
title: "A custom title"
date: "2013/12/12"
tags: 
  - opinion
  - tech
---

... content ...

Query API

All queries return a Silly::Collection of Silly::Items.

Silly::Item represents a file.

@item.data lazily generates any metadata in the file.

@item.content lazily generates the raw content of the file.

Path

Return all files in the base directory (unnested)

query = Silly::Query.new
query.append_path(Dir.pwd)

query.to_a

Return files in the base directory and all sub-directories.

query = Silly::Query.new
query.append_path(Dir.pwd)

query.path_all("").to_a 

Filter

Return files with specific extension

query = Silly::Query.new
query.append_path(Dir.pwd)

query.where("$ext" => ".md").to_a

Return files contained in a given directory (can be any nesting level)

query = Silly::Query.new
query.append_path(Dir.pwd)

query.where("$directories" => "drafts").to_a

Return files where an attribute is a given value

query = Silly::Query.new
query.append_path(Dir.pwd)

query.where("size" => "med").to_a

Return files where an attribute is not a given value

query = Silly::Query.new
query.append_path(Dir.pwd)

query.where("size" => {"$ne" => "med"}).to_a

Return files where an attribute exists

query = Silly::Query.new
query.append_path(Dir.pwd)

query.where("size" => {"$exists" => true}).to_a

Sort

Return files sorted by a given attribute

query = Silly::Query.new
query.append_path(Dir.pwd)

query.sort([:date, :desc]).to_a

Chaining

query = Silly::Query.new
query.append_path(Dir.pwd)

query
  .path("posts")
  .where("$directories" => { "drafts" => { "$ne" => "drafts" } })
  .sort([:date, :desc])
  .to_a

Why

Silly has no dependencies so it's a great engine to build custom static site generators on top of.

I really like the idea of a static website generator but it's really hard to get people to adopt your philosphy of how thing's should work so rather than do that why not empower anyone to build a static generator however they want! That's the idea anyway and this is a very early release so we'll see. Also I am really inspired by projects like Tire and Mongoid of which I've taken heavy inspiration from. Silly is a way to level up my gem skills B).

License

MIT