Quickstart

Eager to get started? This page gives a good introduction to Rost. It assumes you already have Rost installed. If you do not, head over to the Installation section.

Create a skeleton project

To get start with Rost first, choose a name for your project, create an appropriately-named directory, and switch to that directory:
```
$ mkdir project-name
$ cd project-name
```

Create an templates directory for you templates, and add a index.html inside:

$ mkdir templates
$ echo "<h1>Rost Example</h1>" >> templates/index.html

To build your project use the build command:
```
$ rost build
$ open dist/index.html
```

Rendering templates with the `rost` CLI

If you’re just looking to render simple data-less templates, you can get up and running with the command line:

$ rost build

This will recursively search ./templates for templates (any file whose name does not start with . or _) and build them to ./dist.

To monitor your source directory for changes, recompile files if they change, and start a web server use watch:

$ rost watch

The build and watch each take these common options:

--searchpath: Sets the directory to look in for templates.
--outputpath: Sets the directory to place rendered files in.
--staticpath (is accepted multiple times): The directory (or directories) within searchpath where static files (such as CSS and JavaScript) are stored.

Starting a development server

To start a web server, monitor your source directory for changes and recompile files if they change, use watch:

$ rost watch

Preview your site by navigating to http://localhost:8080/ in your browser.

By default the watch command starts an web server bind to localhost on port 8080 you can use the --bind and --port options to set a different bind or port.

To start a live reload server use the --livereload option with watch command:

$ rost watch --livereload

Getting help on version, commands and option names

Getting help on version, available commands, arguments or option names:

$ rost --version
$ rost --help
$ rost build --help
$ rost watch --help

Next Steps

If the CLI does not satisfy your needs, more advanced configuration can be done with custom python build scripts using the Rost API. See Advanced Usage section or API Documentation section for more details.