Static Site Generation

laterite-web renders an application’s public pages to HTML at build time, into a directory any static host serves.

[dependencies]
laterite-web = "0.9"

Type	Role
`Meta`	The shared `<head>` tags: title, description, canonical URL, Open Graph and Twitter card.
`StaticSite`	Collects rendered pages, copies assets, and reports what it wrote.

Templating is yours: any renderer that produces an HTML String.

Write a generator

use laterite_web::{Meta, StaticSite};

fn render_home(head: &str) -> String {
    format!("<!doctype html><html><head>{head}</head><body><h1>Acme</h1></body></html>")
}

fn main() -> std::io::Result<()> {
    let base_url = "https://acme.example";

    let meta = Meta::new("Acme", "The Acme website.")
        .canonical(format!("{base_url}/"))
        .image(format!("{base_url}/static/card.png"));
    let home = render_home(&meta.head_tags());

    let mut site = StaticSite::new("dist", base_url)?;
    site.page("/", &home)?;
    site.assets("static", "static")?;
    Ok(())
}

cargo run writes dist/.

Map URLs to files

Path passed to `page`	File written	Served as
`/`	`dist/index.html`	`/`
`/features/`	`dist/features/index.html`	`/features/`
`/get-started`	`dist/get-started/index.html`	`/get-started/`

Set page metadata

let meta = Meta::new(title, description)
    .canonical(format!("{base_url}{path}"))
    .image(format!("{base_url}/static/img/card.png"));

let head = meta.head_tags();

Method	Description
`new(title, description)`	Escaped; safe to build from content.
`canonical(url)`	Also the Open Graph URL. Optional.
`image(url)`	The social-share image. Optional.

Publish extra files

let urls: Vec<String> = site
    .paths()
    .iter()
    .map(|path| format!("{}{path}", site.base_url()))
    .collect();

site.file("sitemap.xml", &your_sitemap(&urls))?;
site.file("robots.txt", "User-agent: *\nAllow: /\n")?;

Method	Description
`paths()`	Every page written, in order.
`base_url()`	The prefix for absolute URLs.
`file(path, content)`	Writes verbatim at the output root. Creates parent directories; refuses a path outside the output.
`assets(from, to)`	Copies a directory recursively.

No robots.txt or sitemap.xml is written for you.

Deploy

dist/ is plain files. On a host that builds from Git: build command cargo run, publish directory dist.

A page whose content depends on the request (a form, a search, per-user content, the admin) stays on the live server.