Introduction

coltrane is a Dynamic Site Generator that harnesses the power of Django without the hassle. It can also be used to build a static HTML site or as a third-party Django app.

⭐ Features

• Render markdown files as HTML with automatic URL routing based on the filesystem

• Local development server with live re-rendering of markdown and data

• Use JSON files as data sources in content

• Automatic generation of sitemap.xml and rss.xml files

• Can serve non-markdown files like robots.txt

• Deployment best practices with whitenoise and gunicorn already configured

• Leverage custom or built-in Django template tags and filters

• Include any third-party Django app for additional functionality

• Optional building of static HTML files

🙋 What is a Dynamic Site Generator?

coltrane is similar to a static site generator – it takes markdown content and renders it as HTML. However, it also provides an opinionated framework for building dynamic websites.

Examples in the wild

• GitEgo: An egocentric view of GitHub

• python-utils: Interactive Python playground

• unsuckjs.com: Libraries to progressively enhance HTML with minimal amounts of JavaScript

Note

Please let me know if you use coltrane and would like to add it to this list!

🎵 What’s with the name?

coltrane is built on top of the Django web framework, which is named after Django Reinhardt. This framework is named after John Coltrane, another (more avant-garde 🎶) jazz musician.

🙏 Inspiration

https://twitter.com/willmcgugan/status/1477283879841157123 for the initial inspiration and my reaction https://twitter.com/adamghill/status/1477414858396164096.

⚙️ Dependencies

• https://github.com/adamchainz/django-browser-reload for development server live reloads

• https://github.com/boxed/django-fastdev to ensure template variables are available

• https://github.com/lepture/mistune for doing the hard work of rendering the markdown

• https://www.djangoproject.com for doing the hard work of everything else

🎉 Other minimal Django projects

• https://github.com/wsvincent/django-microframework for the app.py idea

• https://olifante.blogs.com/covil/2010/04/minimal-django.html

• https://simonwillison.net/2009/May/19/djng/

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1297873/how-do-i-write-a-single-file-django-application

• https://github.com/pauloxnet/uDjango

🧠 Related projects

yamdl is another approach which lets you store instances of Django models as flat YAML files. It also supports storing markdown.

Here are a few Python static site generators:

• Pelican: Pelican is a static site generator that requires no database or server-side logic.

• Combine: Build a straightforward marketing or documentation website with the power of Jinja.

• Nikola: In goes content, out comes a website, ready to deploy.

• Lektor: A flexible and powerful static content management system for building complex and beautiful websites out of flat files.

• corvid: An opinionated simple static site generator.

• jamstack: The easiest way to create jamstack sites, as simple or as complex as you like.