songs.travisbriggs.com

This is the static site generator setup that powers songs.travisbriggs.com.

It is written with lots of help from this fabulous article

It uses Python, Flask, Flask-FlatPages and Frozen-Flask.

Note that the repository contains metadata for mp3 files but not the actual mp3s themselves. Always back up your mp3 files.

Almost all of the commands below require poetry shell to work. It only has to be done once, in the beginning of your session. Also you might have to do poetry install if this is a fresh checkout.

Adding a song

The basic way this works is that for each song, there is an mp3 file in static/mp3/ and a Markdown file in songs/. These files need to have the same name.

The Markdown file should have some front matter that describes the song. Look at any example in the songs/ directory.

To get the track length of the song (which is specified in milliseconds in the front matter, by convention, but not actually used anywhere in the site), use the following commands:

pipenv run python track_length.py static/mp3/<song_title.mp3>

To add ID3 tags to songs, in case anyone ever downloads them (also not used anywhere in the site), use the id3.sh script:

pipenv run ./id3.sh 'Song title' static/mp3/song_title.mp3

Installing the development version

The project uses pipenv, with an associated Pipfile. Use the following command:

pipenv install

Previewing the site

As stated, the site "runs" on Flask, and can be previewed (or even potentially deployed) as a Flask powered web app. To do so, first install the dependencies using pipenv. You will need the pipenv library installed in your global Python libraries.

pipenv run flask --debug -A sitebuilder run

Then visit the url printed, probably http://localhost:5000.

Deploying the site

The site is currently hosted for free as a static site on Netlify. To deploy, first build the site:

pipenv run python sitebuilder.py build

Then use the Netlify CLI to deploy:

netlify deploy -d build --prod

You might have to log in to Netlify or otherwise provide credentials/pick a site.

Note the --prod flag will clobber production and not give you a chance to preview the deployment, but assuming you already previewed locally on the Flask server, this shouldn't be a problem.