# Static Site Generator with Jinja2 This guide demonstrates how to build a basic static site generator. It uses **Jinja2**, a powerful templating language for Python, to render HTML pages by combining templates with data. **Modules Used:** * `jinja2`: To render HTML templates. * `os`: To handle file paths and directory creation. ## Installation ```bash pip install Jinja2 ``` ## Project Structure For this script to work, create a folder named `templates` in your project directory and add the following two files: **1. templates/base.html** (The master layout) ```html {{ title }} - My Static Site
{% block content %}{% endblock %}
``` **2. templates/page.html** (The content template) ```html {% extends "base.html" %} {% block content %}

{{ heading }}

{{ body }}

{% endblock %} ``` ## The Code Save this as `build.py`. ```python from jinja2 import Environment, FileSystemLoader import os from datetime import datetime def build_site(): # 1. Configuration output_dir = "site" template_dir = "templates" # Create output directory if it doesn't exist if not os.path.exists(output_dir): os.makedirs(output_dir) # 2. Setup Jinja2 Environment env = Environment(loader=FileSystemLoader(template_dir)) template = env.get_template("page.html") # 3. Define Content (The "Database") pages = [ { "filename": "index.html", "title": "Home", "heading": "Welcome to My Site", "body": "This is a static site generated by Python and Jinja2." }, { "filename": "about.html", "title": "About", "heading": "About Me", "body": "I am a Python developer who loves automation." } ] # 4. Render and Write Pages for page in pages: # Add dynamic context (like current date) page['date'] = datetime.now().strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M") print(f"Generating {page['filename']}...") rendered_html = template.render(page) with open(os.path.join(output_dir, page['filename']), "w") as f: f.write(rendered_html) print(f"\nSuccess! Site generated in '{output_dir}/'") if __name__ == "__main__": build_site() ``` ## Usage 1. Ensure you have the `templates` folder created as described above. 2. Run the script: ```bash python build.py ``` 3. Open the newly created `site/index.html` in your browser. [[programming/python/python]]