presite

Why Presite?

Presite is an alternative to static site generators like Gatsby, Next.js and Nuxt.js etc, the difference is that it uses Puppeteer to prerender websites instead of relying on server-side rendering.

Install

npm i -g presite

Note that Presite relies on Chrome (or Chromium) browser on your machine, so you need to ensure it's installed before running Presite.

Usage

presite ./path/to/your/site

Presite is supposed to work with existing single-page applications, first you use something like Create React App, Vue CLI, Parcel or Vite to create a production build of your app, then use Presite to pre-render the website to static HTML files.

Pre-rendered website will be generated into .presite folder.

Examples

{
  "scripts": {
-    "build": "react-scripts build"
+    "build": "react-scripts build && presite ./build"
  }
}

{
  "scripts": {
-    "build": "vue-cli-service build"
+    "build": "vue-cli-service build && presite ./dist"
  }
}

{
  "scripts": {
-    "build": "poi build"
+    "build": "poi build && presite ./dist"
  }
}

{
  "scripts": {
-    "build": "vite build"
+    "build": "vite build && presite ./dist"
  }
}

That's it, Presite prerender all pages of your website without any configuration!

Run presite --help for all CLI flags.

Non-HTML pages

Presite also supports rendering non-HTML pages like XML or JSON pages, simply create files ending with .xml.js or .json.js, let's say you have a feed.json.js:

import { createJSONFeed } from './somewhere/create-json-feed'

export default async () => {
  const posts = await fetch('/api/my-posts').then((res) => res.json())
  return createJSONFeed(posts)
}

You can export a function that resolves to a string or JSON object, then Presite will output this page as feed.json.

These pages are evaluated in browser in a <script type="module"> tag, so you can use the import keyword.

Using presite.config.js

Many CLI flags can be stored in a configuration file, it's totaly optional but if you need one, it's there for you.

Besides presite.config.js, you can also use presite.config.json or the presite key in package.json.

Set routes that needs prerender

If some of your pages are not referenced by other pages, you can manually specify them here:

module.exports = {
  routes: ['/', '/about'],
}

Note that in most cases you won't need this option, Presite automatically find all same-site <a> elements on the pages and prerender all of them.

If you want to fetch routes asynchronously, use async/await:

module.exports = {
  async routes() {
    const routes = await fetchRoutesFromSomeWhere()
    return routes
  },
}

Wait

Wait specific ms or dom element to appear:

module.exports = {
  wait: 3000,
  // Or wait for an element to appear
  // wait: '#comments'
}

Maunally set ready state

Instead of using wait you can manually tell when the app is ready:

module.exports = {
  manually: true,
}

Then you can call window.snapshot in your app when its contents are ready:

window.snapshot && window.snapshot()

To use a custom global variable name, set it to a string instead:

module.exports = {
  manually: `__my_snapshot__`,
}

Now you should call window.__my_snapshot__() instead.

Access Puppeteer browser page

Access the page instance, for example, to expose some functions from Node.js to browser:

module.exports = {
  async onBrowserPage(page) {
    await page.exposeFunction('md5', (content) => md5(content))
  },
}

Filter out link to be crawled

To prevent link (from <a> elements) to be crawled, you could use the linkFilter option:

module.exports = {
  // Returns `true` to keep, `false` otherwise
  linkFilter(url) {
    // Ignore URLs ending with .xml
    return !url.endsWith('.xml')
  },
}

Source directory

This is the same as using CLI presite ./path/to/your/spa:

module.exports = {
  baseDir: './path/to/your/spa',
}

Output directory

By default it outputs to .presite folder in current directory.

module.exports = {
  outDir: '.presite',
}

CLI options

Run presite --help.

Contributing

1. Fork it!
2. Create your feature branch: git checkout -b my-new-feature
3. Commit your changes: git commit -am 'Add some feature'
4. Push to the branch: git push origin my-new-feature
5. Submit a pull request :D

Author

presite © egoist, Released under the MIT License. Authored and maintained by egoist with help from contributors (list).

Website · GitHub @egoist · Twitter @_egoistlily