motivation

what

pankat is a static blog generator inspired by joey hess's ikiwiki.

notable features:

• writing / reading aid

  • markdown syntax for writing articles
  • table of contents using jquery.tocify.min.js
  • dynamic page anchors (similar to anchor.js)
  • [[!draft]] mode support
  • live updates of article changes via websocket using file system changes monitoring in the documents folder
  • full git support

• minimalistic approach:

  • pankat instance creates static html documents
  • uses sqlite database
  • manage documents with git
  • hosting of documents with nginx

• out of source document builds

• full theme-support, asset folder contains

  • templates
  • css
  • js
  • fonts

run

nix develop
just run

this command executes the WASM build, copies artefacts and starts the webserver.

configuration file

pankat supports:

• command line (see pankat --help for details)
• environment variables (most likely only used for these)
  • PANKAT_JWT_SECRET
  • PANKAT_ADMIN_PASSWORD
• config file pankat.toml
  • see the pankat.toml for documentation

architecture

supported platforms

• linux (with nix)
• windows (untested)

dependencies

• rust
• pandoc 3.x
• (see flake.nix dependencies)

sqlite database

used for:

• storing parsed article structure
• article cache (so we don't need to run pandoc each tim)

pankat uses diesel to query the database.

extend schema

diesel print-schema > src/db/schema.rs

development

• run the tests just test
• just run, then connect to localhost:5000 with any webbrowser
• you can delete documents/output and documents/pankat.sqlite then start pankat again
• use the documents/example.de documents, theme contributions are welcome

deployment

currently: just run, then cp target/debug/pankat /home/pankat-app/pankat.

ideally: just zig, then cp target/release/pankat /home/pankat-app/pankat and later using a nix expression to build and use a read-only /nix/store for both pankat binary and artifacts.

directory structure

/etc/nixos> ls /home/pankat-app/
╭───┬──────────────────────────────┬──────┬──────────┬─────────────╮
│ # │             name             │ type │   size   │  modified   │
├───┼──────────────────────────────┼──────┼──────────┼─────────────┤
│ 0 │ /home/pankat-app/documents   │ dir  │    108 B │ 8 hours ago │
│ 1 │ /home/pankat-app/pankat      │ file │ 117.6 MB │ 9 hours ago │
│ 2 │ /home/pankat-app/pankat.toml │ file │    948 B │ 9 hours ago │
╰───┴──────────────────────────────┴──────┴──────────┴─────────────╯

/etc/nixos> ls /home/pankat-app/documents/
╭───┬────────────────────────────────────────────┬──────┬─────────┬─────────────╮
│ # │                    name                    │ type │  size   │  modified   │
├───┼────────────────────────────────────────────┼──────┼─────────┼─────────────┤
│ 0 │ /home/pankat-app/documents/assets          │ dir  │    58 B │ 9 hours ago │
│ 1 │ /home/pankat-app/documents/blog.lastlog.de │ dir  │    48 B │ a day ago   │
│ 2 │ /home/pankat-app/documents/lastlog.de      │ dir  │    10 B │ a day ago   │
│ 3 │ /home/pankat-app/documents/output          │ dir  │ 11.1 kB │ 8 hours ago │
│ 4 │ /home/pankat-app/documents/pankat.sqlite   │ file │  2.4 MB │ 8 hours ago │
│ 5 │ /home/pankat-app/documents/wasm            │ dir  │   188 B │ 9 hours ago │
╰───┴────────────────────────────────────────────┴──────┴─────────┴─────────────╯

configuration.nix

this config makes sure that nginx does all the serving in production and only the /api/ws is from pankat. yet live-updates are properly served and html documents in documents/output are properly updated on fs-changes.

users.users = {
  pankat-app = {
    isSystemUser = true;
    home = "/pankat-app";
    group = "pankat-app";
    description = "pankat app users";
  };
};
users.groups.pankat-app = {};

security.acme = {
  acceptTerms = true;
  defaults.email = "[email protected]";
};

services.nginx = {
  enable = true;
  recommendedGzipSettings = true;
  recommendedOptimisation = true;
  virtualHosts = {
    lastlogblog = {
      serverName = "lastlog.de";
      serverAliases = [ "www.lastlog.de" ];
      forceSSL = true;
      enableACME = true;
      extraConfig = ''
        location /blog/api/ws {
          proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:5000;
          proxy_set_header Host $host;
          proxy_http_version 1.1;
          proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
          proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
          proxy_read_timeout 86400;
        }
        location ^~ /blog/posts/ {
          alias /pankat-app/documents/blog.lastlog.de/posts/;
          autoindex on;
        }
        location ^~ /blog/media/ {
          alias /pankat-app/documents/blog.lastlog.de/media/;
          autoindex on;
        }
        location ^~ /blog/assets/ {
          alias /pankat-app/documents/assets/;
          autoindex on;
        }
        location ^~ /blog/wasm/ {
          alias /pankat-app/documents/wasm/;
          autoindex on;
        }
        location ^~ /blog/ {
          alias /pankat-app/documents/output/;
          autoindex on;
        }
        location = / {
          return 301 https://lastlog.de/blog/index.html;
        }
        location = /blog {
          return 301 https://lastlog.de/blog/index.html;
        }
      '';
    };
  };
};

commands

setfacl -d -m u:joachim:rwx /pankat-app
setfacl -R -m u:joachim:rx /pankat-app
setfacl -R -m u:nginx:rx /pankat-app
setfacl -d -m u:nginx:rx /pankat-app