By Pat Collins

Cub is a very simple template development environment and static site generator made in PHP. It was designed to make template development easier with the Twig template language, which borrows heavily in syntax from the Django template language, but is written in PHP.

I find it's great for rapid prototyping, but I realized it could have a lot more uses, so into the open source jungle it goes.

1. Clone the repo.

2. Grab the submodules:

   git submodule update --init
   

First, point your Apache/PHP dev environment's DocumentRoot to the public folder. Make sure AllowOverride All is set so Apache knows to load the included .htaccess file.

Here's the idea:

1. Write your templates using Twig.
2. Put your static files in the public/static folder.
3. If you need data to work with, create a YAML file with some hashes in it and stick it in the data folder. This data will be available to you in the templates.
4. Rinse and repeat.

When you access / (or index or /index.html) in your browser, cub will find the templates/index.html file, compile it using Twig (which gives you template inheritance and other cool features), and serve it up to your browser.

Sometimes you just need a static site. Anyone who has used PHP includes at length knows it is a pain, and the concept of template inheritance has shown us a better way.

Cub supports "compiling" your whole site into a set of files that you can FTP/SFTP/SCP/SSH/RSYNC anywhere. It uses Rake to make the build script easy to write and understand, so you'll need Ruby and Rake to use it.

It's simple to run the build command:

rake

This will compile your site into static HTML files into a folder called build. You can then rsync to your heart's desire.

Cub requires Apache and at least PHP 5.2.4 and the following libraries:

• Twig
• sfYaml

Copyright (c) 2010 Pat Collins <burned.com>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.