[Radiant] [PREVIEW] Snapshot extension: serve Radiant sites statically

[Hiram Chirino]

Hi Aitor,

It might be worth putting up a project for this extension at
http://code.google.com/hosting/

On 10/25/07, Aitor Garay-Romero <me at aitor.name> wrote:
>     The attachment is here:  http://aitor.name/snapshot.tar.gz
>
>      /AITOR
>
> On 10/24/07, Aitor Garay-Romero <me at aitor.name> wrote:
> >
> > Hi!,
> >
> >     Find it attached to this message.
> >
> >     The basic idea of the snapshot extension is to generate a local copy
> > of all pages in Radiant's database.  This allows to deploy a complete site
> > as static files to the web server, where it can be served statically by the
> > web server (Apache...) without a running Radiant instance.   It's useful for
> > deployment of Radiant sites to cheap hosting servers where there isn't Rails
> > support.  Also high traffic sites will benefit.
> >
> >     All this works if the rendered pages depend only on the state of the
> > DB at snapshot creation time.  It won't work on a blog site where users can
> > post comments, for example.  Neither won't work if "non deterministic" tags
> > are used, like <date for="now"> and <random>.  Also care must be taken with
> > the back_door extension.  Well, in these cases the extension "will work" in
> > the sense that the pages are generated, but obviously they will be "stale"
> > since they are "fixed" and don't represent their "dynamic" version.
> >
> >     Although it looks quite a hard requirement, in practice most of the
> > sites generated by CMSs are "static" (think on most company sites).  I have
> > developed this extension for myself, i will use it in a few sites i'm
> > developing.  It works like a charm in the sites i have tested it.
> >
> >     It will take me a few weeks to finalize the extension, but i publish
> > it now so it can be tested and commented by everyone.  Remains to be done:
> > documentation, usage examples ( Apache's .htaccess, etc.), minor extra
> > functionality and general clean-up.
> >
> >     This extension comes from the ideas i commented in thread
> > http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/124798 .
> >
> >     USAGE (assuming the cwd is the root of the Radiant site (RAILS_ROOT)):
> >
> >
> >     - install extension
> >     - execute "rake -T | grep snapshot" to see the taks and their
> > description (it's controlled with Rake tasks)
> >     - the default configuration should be correct for quick test, check it
> > at "vendor/extensions/snapshot/config/snapshot.yaml"
> >     - if you need to update the configuration, run "rake
> > snapshot:create_config" and edit the file in "config/snapshot.yaml"
> >     - execute "rake snapshot:create", all the site will be dumped to
> > "snapshot/" (by default "production" database)
> >     - execute "rake snapshot:serve" to start a local web server on
> > http://localhost:8080 where you can test the snapshot
> >     - profit! :-)
> >
> >     Comments etc. welcomed.
> >
> >     /AITOR
> >
> >
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-- 
Regards,
Hiram

Blog: http://hiramchirino.com