Generate database collections filled with content from static files.
Install the module with: mrt add electrostatic
Electrostatic is very simple content generator for Meteor that allows you to manage a controlled set of MongoDB collections and documents via static files.
It recursively reads in all files under the private/static directory of
your app and parses them with meta-marked.
This makes it possible to define any content type like static pages, products or blog articles as static markdown files with meta data:
Example for generating static pages:
---
collection: pages
title: Welcome to Electrostatic
---
This is my static page content written in markdown!Example for generating blog articles:
---
collection: articles
author: Dominik Guzei
title: Introducing Electrostatic
slug: introducing-electrostatic
---
This is my first blog article about Electrostatic!You have to define the collection meta data, as it defines in which collection
that specific document is inserted by Electrostatic. All other meta data is optional
and you can define any properties you want. All properties except collection are
copied over to the document that is inserted in the database.
On your server side you have to tell Electrostatic to generate the data:
if (Meteor.isServer) {
Meteor.startup(function () {
// Provide the global app namespace to the generate function
Electrostatic.generate(this);
});
}Electrostatic uses the global app namespace to lookup existing collections take over control instead of blindly creating new ones. This allows you to define the static collections like "normal" ones and use them everywhere else like expected. Electrostatic only fills them up with your static data.
However, you have to be careful to match the collection names within your application with those used in the static documents.
On client and server you can define your collections like this:
// the variable names of the global collection instances have to match with the
// collection names in the static documents (remember: "collection: pages" in the meta data)
pages = new Meteor.Collection('pages');
articles = new Meteor.Collection('articles');
Template.pages_index.helpers({
pages: pages.find()
});
Template.blog_index.helpers({
articles: articles.find()
});Be aware that Electrostatic always removes all documents from its managed collections before inserting the existing ones again. There is no algorithm that checks if the document actually changed or anything. So you won't be able to reference the document by id, because it will change everytime Electrostatic runs (most commonly everytime you restart the server)
You can look through a simple example app that uses Electrostatic.
- 0.1.6 - Fixes API incompatibility with Meteor.bindEnvironment (version 0.6.6)
- 0.1.5 - Fixes problems with iron-router and fast-render
- 0.1.4 - Praying to the gods of Atmosphere (versioning problems)
- 0.1.3 - Improving API / make it work on server side too
- 0.1.2 - Fixing issues with Atmosphere
- 0.1.1 - First release
Copyright (c) 2013 Code Adventure Licensed under the MIT license.