I read a couple of articles about template engines in the past week,
so the idea came to me to generate my gophermaps using templates.
I occasionally use Python to automate some of my tasks at work.
Although we are not using Python in our day-to-day tasks, I installed
it on my work laptop as - fortunately - I have admin rights. I always
try new ways, new programming languages for at least the menial tasks.
I already read about Jinja somewhere, so I thought I'll give it a try.
It's really easy to use, I wrote some test code yesterday to check out
the features I need to generate the gophermaps. I think I will
complete this and try it out on my VPS.
My plan is as follows: Write a small Python app that reads the phlog
entries in a directory and passes those to the template engine. There
will be a Jinja template for the gophermap put under git version
management. The post-receive hook of the bare repo on the server
already does the deploy, but currently I have to edit the gophermap in
the git repo in order to publish the new phlog entry. Thus I plan to
run the gophermap generation in this post-receive hook after the
checkout to the gopher directory.
This way I can modify the gophermap template in the repo if I want,
but adding a new phlog entry will be simplified. I'll only have to add
the phlog text file and the gophermap will be updated.
I'll be on vacation from December 17th so I hope I won't abandon this
little side project and will be able to complete it on the VPS.
As for SDF-EU the situation is a bit complicated as I am an ARPA
member and as such I do not have access to git. Nevertheless the
gophermap generation can be useful here, too.
