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Show HN: I Built a XSLT Blog Framework

(vgr.land)
116 points vgr-land | 1 comments | 24 Aug 25 17:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.43s | source

A few weeks ago a friend sent me grug-brain XSLT (1) which inspired me to redo my personal blog in XSLT.

Rather than just build my own blog on it, I wrote it up for others to use and I've published it on GitHub https://github.com/vgr-land/vgr-xslt-blog-framework (2)

Since others have XSLT on the mind, now seems just as good of a time as any to share it with the world. Evidlo@ did a fine job explaining the "how" xslt works (3)

The short version on how to publish using this framework is:

1. Create a new post in HTML wrapped in the XML headers and footers the framework expects.

2. Tag the post so that its unique and the framework can find it on build

3. Add the post to the posts.xml file

And that's it. No build system to update menus, no RSS file to update (posts.xml is the rss file). As a reusable framework, there are likely bugs lurking in CSS, but otherwise I'm finding it perfectly usable for my needs.

Finally, it'd be a shame if XSLT is removed from the HTML spec (4), I've found it quite eloquent in its simplicity.

(1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44393817

(2) https://github.com/vgr-land/vgr-xslt-blog-framework

(3) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44988271

(4) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44952185

(Aside - First time caller long time listener to hn, thanks!)

Show context
theknarf ◴[25 Aug 25 16:05 UTC] No.45015343[source]▶
Suggestion, replace this:

    <item>
      <title>Last Blog Post</title>
      <description>
        I am Jack's XML Parser. I consume unclosed tags I kill jack.
      </description>
      <link>https://xsltblogdemo.vgr.land/content/posts/20250707.xml</link>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">post-20250707</guid>
      <pubDate>Mon, 7 Jul 2025 13:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
      <author>vgr.xsltbf@example.com (vgr)</author>
    </item>
With this:

    <post
      title="Last Blog Post"
      description="I am Jack's XML Parser. I consume unclosed tags I kill jack."
      link="https://xsltblogdemo.vgr.land/content/posts/20250707.xml"
      isPermaLink="false"
      guid="post-20250707"
      pubDate="Mon, 7 Jul 2025 13:00:00 +0000"
      author="vgr.xsltbf@example.com (vgr)">
    Content of the post....
    </post>
replies(2): >>45016105 #>>45019419 #
1. jprjr_ ◴[25 Aug 25 17:07 UTC] No.45016105[source]▶
I don't know if this is intentionally hilarious or unintentionally hilarious, I guess it's the same result either way.
replies(1): >>45018102 #