Introduction

coltrane can be used as a self-contained app framework for content sites, as a third-party app in a Django project to render markdown files, or as a static site builder. 🎵

⭐ Features

• Render markdown files as HTML with automatic URL routing based on the filesystem

• Local development server with live re-rendering of markdown and data

• Use JSON files as a data source

• Automatic generation of sitemap.xml and rss.xml

• Can also serve non-markdown files, e.g. robots.txt

• Site-wide redirects

• Deployment best practices with Docker, whitenoise, and gunicorn already pre-configured

• Leverage built-in or custom Django template tags and filters

• Include any third-party Django app for additional functionality

• Serve multiple domains with custom sites

• Optional building of static HTML files

👀 Examples in the wild

• GitEgo: An egocentric view of GitHub (uses the GitHub GraphQL endpoints)

• python-utils: Interactive Python playground (uses django-unicorn component library)

• unsuckjs.com: Libraries to progressively enhance HTML with minimal amounts of JavaScript (uses GitHub REST API)

• djangobrew.com: Website for the Django Brew podcast (uses the Buzzsprout API)

• djangostickers.com: Quirky, fun stickers for Django

Note

Please let me know if you use coltrane and would like to add it to this list!

🎵 What’s with the name?

coltrane is built on top of the Django web framework, which is named after Django Reinhardt. This framework is named after John Coltrane, another (more avant-garde 🎶) jazz musician.

🙏 Inspiration

https://twitter.com/willmcgugan/status/1477283879841157123 for the initial inspiration and my reaction https://twitter.com/adamghill/status/1477414858396164096.

⚙️ Dependencies

• https://github.com/adamchainz/django-browser-reload for development server live reloads

• https://github.com/boxed/django-fastdev to ensure template variables are available

• https://github.com/lepture/mistune for doing the hard work of rendering the markdown

• https://www.djangoproject.com for doing the hard work of everything else

🎉 Other minimal Django projects

• https://github.com/wsvincent/django-microframework for the app.py idea

• https://olifante.blogs.com/covil/2010/04/minimal-django.html

• https://simonwillison.net/2009/May/19/djng/

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1297873/how-do-i-write-a-single-file-django-application

• https://github.com/pauloxnet/uDjango

🧠 Related projects

Django

• django-distill: Minimal configuration static site generator for Django.

• django-bakery: A set of helpers for baking your Django site out as flat files.

• yamdl: store instances of Django models as flat YAML files; also supports storing markdown.

• django-static-sites: An easy to use Django app that allow you to create a static sites with the power of Django template system.

• django-dynamic-sites: Implements a flexible and generic viewsystem providing a convenient way to handle staticpages, model based pages and much more.

Python

• Pelican: Pelican is a static site generator that requires no database or server-side logic.

• Combine: Build a straightforward marketing or documentation website with the power of Jinja.

• Nikola: In goes content, out comes a website, ready to deploy.

• Lektor: A flexible and powerful static content management system for building complex and beautiful websites out of flat files.

• corvid: An opinionated simple static site generator.

• jamstack: The easiest way to create jamstack sites, as simple or as complex as you like.

• MyST: A Sphinx and Docutils extension for a rich and extensible flavour of Markdown for authoring technical and scientific documentation.

• Render Engine: A static site generator built in Python that allows you to generate websites, pages, and collections, with Python classes.