Blox Theme Demo

Lighthouse score: 100/100

The primary goal of the project is to facilitate rapid development of static websites.

This project includes:

• Sass preprocessing
• Nunjucks/HTML for templating
• CSS concatenation and minification
• Javascript concatenation and uglification
• Multi-browser live browser reload
• Master-detail pattern
• A modular, reusable design

Getting Started

1. Clone this repository

git clone https://github.com/Building-Blox/blox-theme-demo.git
cd blox-theme-demo

Or download as a ZIP.

2. Install packages

npm install

3. Run the development server

npm run dev

The website will be viewable at http://localhost:3000. On save of the project, output will be compiled and built to the “public” directory and the website will be reloaded.

How to use

Project structure

Blox assumes the following project structure:

|--src // required
    |--data // required, but folder and contents will be auto-generated if you supply a dataUrl
        |--db.json // required
    |--templates //required
        |--pages //required
            |--home //required. This is the homepage folder. Other pages can be added in the same manner
                |--index.njk //required
|--gulpfile.js // required

Creating templates

Nunjucks is used for compiling template files to HTML.

Templates are stored in “src/templates”. To create a template, create a file in the templates directory with the “.njk” file extension.

Pages

Pages are added as sub-directories of the “pages” directory with an index.njk file.

Includes

To pull in another template, use the following syntax:

{% include "folder/file.njk" %}

This is used to include the layout templates in each of the pages:

{% include "layout/_header.njk" %}

Partials

Partial files begin with an underscore and encapulate reusable components of a page. The home folder (home page) contains two examples of partials: _landing.njk and _reviews.njk.

Partial files are defined with Nunjucks blocks:

{% block greeting %} 
<h2>Hi</h2>
{% endblock %}

The partial can then be used in your page like so:

{% block hello %}{% endblock %}

More properties can be added to this object as needed.

Detail pages

The master-detail pattern (i.e. a list page and a detail page), is demonstrated in the features page:

...
        |--pages
        ...
            |--features // page folder
                |--detail //
                    |--index.njk // this is your detail page
                |--index.njk //this is your list (master) page
...

So, if a feature item has an ID of “abc123”, the detail page would be accessible at:

http://localhost:3000/features/abc123

Data

Loading data

Dummy data of reviews, features and documentation is already included in the project. Data can be loaded in three ways:

1. Manually add a db.json file to the data folder.
2. Load remote data by running npm load --dataUrl 'http://example.com/api/whatever'
3. Load remote data and build the project by running npm build

Data environment variables

Rename the .env.sample file to .env and update the values.

BASE_URL=https://studio.appyay.com
ENV_ID=
API_KEY=
DATA_URL=${BASE_URL}/api/cd/v1/environments/${ENV_ID}/items?apikey=${API_KEY}

Database

The database data for the application is located at data/db.json. This data can be repopulated every time the project builds, so you can have dynamic data if used in combination with static hosting services, webhooks and a headless CMS.

Data in this file should be in the following format (using “features” as an example):

{
    "features": {
        "items":  [
            {
                "id": "abc123",
                ...
            }
        ]
    }
}

Assets

Sass

Sass files are stored in the src/assets/scss/ directory and in the root of page directories. The root Sass file is src/assets/scss/index.scss.
Sass files can also be kept be at a page/component level (in the templates directory). These are automatically compiled and are imported into the main Sass file:

@import '../../dist/components';

But note that you won’t have control over source order, so component level styles should be written so that they are encapsulated. If source order is important to you, you should create Sass files in the src/assets/scss directory instead and import them manually into the main Sass file.

Javascript

Javascript files can be added to:

• the src/assets/js folder (the main file is index.js)
• page directories
• component directories

The page and component Javascript files should be named the same as the directory.

Images

Images can be added to the src/assets/images folder. This is an example of how to access an image:

<img src="{{ blox.sitePath }}my-image.png" alt="My image"/>