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Web Development without programming

Sprinkles

A minimalist zero-programming web framework.

https://sprinkles.tobiasdammers.nl/

https://github.com/tdammers/sprinkles/

What It Does

Sprinkles enables you to build HTML front-ends to diverse data sources, without any programming.

You write:

• A YAML configuration file that defines URLs and data sources
• A set of templates that say how to turn data into HTML
• Some static assets

Sprinkles then turns that into a fully functioning dynamic website - or bakes it into a static site.

Supported data sources

• Local files
• HTTP(S)
• SQL databases:
  • MySQL
  • SQLite
  • PostgreSQL
• Subprocesses

Supported data fomats

• JSON
• YAML
• Markdown
• ReStructuredText
• Textile
• LaTeX
• WikiCreole
• HTML
• Plain text
• DOCX

Typical Use Cases

• As a presentation layer for a headless CMS. Sprinkles can load data from a JSON API, feed it directly to your templates, and serve those on the fly.
• As a poor man's CMS, pulling data from a set of local files. Sprinkles supports a wide range of data formats, including JSON, YAML, Markdown, ReStructuredText, DOCX, HTML, and several more.
• As a static site generator. Develop your website locally, rendering it dynamically until you are happy with it, then bake it into a static website ready to upload to a web server.

Installing

Binary Install (x64 Linux)

This is the preferred way of installing sprinkles.

1. Install the system dependencies; at the time of writing, those are:
   • libfcgi (for FCGI support)
   • libgmp (for Haskell's bignum type)
   • libcurl (for HTTP backends)
   • libpcre (for PCRE regex support)
   • libpq5 (for the PostgreSQL backend)
   • libmysqlclient (for MySQL support)
   • libssl (for TLS support) The exact names of the packages that you need to install for your OS may vary, so unfortunately we cannot provide a definitive list here.
2. Get the binary release tarball from https://github.com/tdammers/sprinkles/releases/latest (both zip file and tarball are available, both contain the same files)
3. Unzip or untar
4. Copy the sprinkles binary in sprinkles/bin/sprinkles to somewhere on your $PATH. The suggested location for single-user deployments is ~/.local/bin/sprinkles, or ~/bin/sprinkles; for system-wide installation as root, /usr/local/bin/sprinkles.
5. cd to the countryInfo example project and start a sprinkles server: cd examples/countryInfo; sprinkles -serve 5000
6. Point your browser at http://localhost:5000/.

From Source

1. Install development versions of the system dependencies; at the time of writing, those are:
   • libfcgi (for FCGI support)
   • libgmp (for Haskell's bignum type)
   • libcurl (for HTTP backends)
   • libpcre (for PCRE regex support)
   • libpq5 (for the PostgreSQL backend)
   • libmysqlclient (for MySQL support)
   • libssl (for TLS support for the HTTP backend) The exact names of the packages that you need to install for your OS may vary, so unfortunately we cannot provide a definitive list here. On debian-like systems, the package names tend to end in -dev though.
2. Clone the Sprinkles repository: git clone https://github.com/tdammers/sprinkles.git
3. Go to the project directory:

cd sprinkles

4. Build and install the sprinkles binary for your user:

• Using Cabal:

  cabal v2-install
  

• Using Stack:

  stack install
  

5. cd to the countryInfo example project and start a sprinkles server: cd examples/countryInfo; sprinkles -serve 5000
6. Point your browser at http://localhost:5000/.

Further Reading

• Sprinkles Website
• Getting Started
• User Guide