thp

thp, or tiny hypertext preprocessor, is a tool that helps you write small static websites with Lua.

<ul>
  <?lua
  for i = 1, 10 do
    echo('<li>' .. i .. '</li>')
  end
  ?>
</ul>

The example above creates a list of numbers 1 to 10.

Download thp

Usage

Create an HTML file. Anything surrounding <?lua and ?> will be executed as Lua code. To run thp, you can use any of the following:

thp serve <directory> [address] runs a local server for the given directory.
thp build <file> builds a single file and displays it to stdout.
thp build_dir <src> <dst> builds all files in src and writes the results to dst. Any files that start with an underscore are not written to dst.

In addition to the standard Lua libraries, thp introduces two new functions:

echo outputs a string.
import includes a file. If the file ends in .html, it will run the preprocessor. Otherwise, the file is treated as a .lua file in the same manner as require.

Because require only loads a file once, you'll probably want to use import over require, to make sure everything gets executed per HTTP request.

Building

thp is written in Odin. Download Odin and run odin build . in this repo's directory.

On Windows, lua54.dll is required. You can locate it in Odin's vendor directory through Odin/vendor/lua/5.4/windows/lua54.dll. Place it in the same directory as the executable.

Examples

Below, index.html and about.html shares the same HTML skeleton provided by _base.html.

<!-- _base.html -->
<?lua

function document(body)
  ?>
  <!DOCTYPE html>
  <html lang="en">
  <head>
    <title>My Awesome Site</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <nav>
      <ul>
        <li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
        <li><a href="/about.html">About</a></li>
      </ul>
    </nav>
    <?lua body() ?>
  </body>
  </html>
  <?lua
end

?>

<!-- index.html -->
<?lua

import '_baseof.html'

document(function()
  ?>
  <h1>Homepage</h1>
  <?lua
end)

?>

<!-- about.html -->
<?lua

import '_baseof.html'

document(function()
  ?>
  <h1>About</h1>
  <p>
    Lorem, ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing elit. Asperiores id
    sed earum corporis quaerat. Sed possimus placeat ea obcaecati omnis?
    Minima, hic aliquid qui delectus ullam iste, provident numquam nam?
  </p>
  <?lua
end)

?>

You can create a lua file that contains some data, then import that data in an HTML file.

-- _products.lua

return {
  {
    name = "T-Shirt",
    price = "29.99 CAD",
    quantity = 40,
  },
  {
    name = "Jacket",
    price = "79.99 CAD",
    quantity = 30,
  },
  {
    name = "Scarf",
    price = "23.99 CAD",
    quantity = 33,
  },
}

<!-- store.html -->
<?lua

local products = import '_products.lua'

for i, product in ipairs(products) do
  ?>
  <div>
    <h2><?lua echo(product.name) ?></h2>
    <p>Price: <?lua echo(product.price) ?></p>
    <p>Quantity: <?lua echo(product.quantity) ?></p>
  </div>
  <?lua
end

?>