Namespace for all classes that are used to write content to a specific destination.

About¶ ↑

This class is used to manage destination classes. A destination class is a class that writes content to a specific destination. For example, the FileSystem class uses the file system to write out the generated content to the file system.

The register method is used for registering new destination classes.

Since there can only be one destination class per website instance, this manager class hides the implementation details and uses the configuration option “destination” to create a new object from the correct destination class. Use the write, read, exists? and delete methods on this manager class to perform the equivalent operations on the destination class.

Implementing a destination class¶ ↑

A destination class must respond to the following five methods:

initialize(website, *args)

The website instance is always provided as the first argument and the initialize method can have any number of other parameters.

exists?(path)

Return true if the given path exists.

delete(path)

Delete the given path.

write(path, data)

Write the data to the given path. If path ends with a slash, a directory should be created. The parameter data is either a String with the content or a Webgen::Path object. If it is the latter, use the Webgen::Path#io method for retrieving the IO object.

read(path, mode = 'rb')

Return the content of the given path if it exists or raise an error otherwise. The parameter mode specifies the mode in which the path should be opened and defaults to reading in binary mode.

It seems a bit odd that a destination object has to implement reading functionality. However, consider the case where you want webgen to render a website programmatically and use the generated data. In this case you need a way to get the content of the generated files!

Sample destination class¶ ↑

Following is a simple destination class which stores the written content in a hash in memory:

class MemoryDestination

  attr_reader :data

  def initialize(website)
    # the website object is not used in this destination class
    @data = {}
  end

  def exists?(path)
    @data.has_key?(path)
  end

  def delete(path)
    @data.delete(path)
  end

  def write(path, data)
    @data[path] = (data.kind_of?(String) ? data : data.data)
  end

  def read(path, mode = 'rb')
    raise "No such path #{path}" unless @data[path] && path[-1] != ?/
    @data[path]
  end
end

website.ext.destination.register MemoryDestination, :name => 'memory'