The Static Site Generator Jigsaw Launched V1.0

Jigsaw, a static site generator, made by Tighten just tagged and launched v1.0 that includes the addition of Collections. These allow you to work with a list of related content, like blog posts, a portfolio of your work, staff bios, and more.

Just like the earlier version Jigsaw still runs on Blade, so you get to continue using the familiar syntax you are used to when building out your templates. That paired with Markdown content makes it super friendly to create the content you need.

“Like the core of Jigsaw itself, collections are designed to be as simple as possible to implement,” Keith Damiani said in the release announcement, “while at the same time giving you the power and flexibility to build some pretty advanced sites.”

Here it the config example for setting up a new set of Collections:

return [
    'company' => 'Tighten Co',
    'contact_email' => 'support@tighten.co',
    'collections' => [
        'people' => [
            'path' => 'people',
            'sort' => 'last_name',
        ],
        'posts' => [
            'path' => 'blog/{date|Y-m-d}/{filename}',
            'author' => 'Tighten Co.',
        ],
    ],
];

In this sample, the “people” are sorted by last_name which would be defined in the Markdown files YAML front matter. Then the “posts” uses a dynamic folder path with the date stamp and a default author of Tighten Co., which is a fallback from the YAML front matter.

#Jigsaw Pagination

V1.0 also comes with a pagination system that is defined directly in your Blade file:

// posts.blade.php
---
pagination:
  collection: posts
  perPage: 5
---
@extends('_layouts.master')

Then your view has access to a $pagination object with everything you need for creating advanced pagination.

#Jigsaw Variables and Helpers

I briefly touched on variables above where the “posts” collection had a fallback author if one wasn’t defined in the YAML front matter. To add to this is a new helper functions system that can be utilized right in the config file:

return [
    'excerpt' => function ($page, $characters = 100) {
        return substr($page->getContent(), 0, $characters);
    },
    'collections' => [
        'posts' => [
            'excerpt' => function ($page, $characters = 50) {
                return substr(strip_tags($page->getContent()), 0, $characters);
            },
        ],
    ],
];

In this example, the first excerpt limits the characters to a default of 100, and in the “posts” collection it overrides the first by stripping HTML tags and defaulting to limiting just 50 characters.

#Conclusion

When I first looked at Jigsaw back in December of 2015 I was excited about the possibilities because of everything just felt easy. With Blade it had the template syntax I was comfortable with, which meant I didn’t have to learn yet another template system; it utilizes Gulp and Elixir and even carries a jigsaw console command similar to Artisan.

With the addition of Collections this static site generator will be a fantastic tool to use for the next site you build or even your blog. For more details on Jigsaw, you can read Tighten’s release announcement and visit the official site.