Brief

Turning writers into object oriented programmers

Brief lets writers build applications on top of collections of markdown files. Brief lets you define different classes or types of documents, called Models which are responsible for defining certain writing conventions that apply to a group of documents.

When documents conform to these conventions, it is possible to treat them as software entities with attributes, and give the documents and their content unique identities that can be mapped to other parts of the software systems we work with every day.

Turn documents into data

The most basic way of combining writing with data, is through the use of YAML Frontmatter as metadata for the document. For example:

---
type: post
status: draft
tags:
  - help
  - ruby
---

# This is a title
## This is a subtitle

This is the first paragraph.

This is another pargraph.

This YAML content at the top gets turned into data associated with the document.

post = Post.new("/path/to/post.md") 
post.status # => 'draft'
post.tags # => ['help','ruby']

The YAML data is useful, but where the brief model system really shines is in the ability to extract data and metadata from the writing itself.

Each Model prescribes its own specific structure, usually in the form of heading hierarchys (h1, h2, h3, etc). Any CSS selector can be used against the rendered HTML produced by the markdown. A model can define attributes that will be extracted from the writing, for example:

define "Recipe" do
  content do
    title "h1:first-of-type"
    subtitle "h2:first-of-type"
    excerpt "p:first-of-type"

    # parses YAML blocks inside the document
    settings 'code.yaml', :serialize => true

    define_section("Ingredients") do
      each("li").is_a(:ingredient).has(:name=>"li")
    end

    define_section("Steps") do
      each("li").is_a(:step).has(:description=>"li")
    end

    helpers do
      def ingredient_names
        sections.ingredients.items.map(&:name)
      end

      def have_inventory?
        !ingredient_names.detect {|ingredient| inventory[ingredient].to_i <= 0 }
      end
    end
  end
end

define "Ingredient" do
  content do
    title "h1:first-of-type"
    summary "p:first-of-type"

    define_section("Vendors") do
      each("h2").is_a(:vendor).has(:title=>"h2",:website=>"a:first-of-type")
    end
  end

  helpers do
    def vendor_websites
      sections.vendors.items.map(&:website)
    end
  end
end

Document Structure

Brief works by processing the markdown that is rendered by default, and building a hierarchal structure based on the headings you use. A Brief::Model can be assigned to a certain folder of documents, and if all of those documents follow the same heading structure, you can interact with the documents as data structures and treat them as relatable entities in your object oriented software system.

This opens up writing as a possible user interface for a number of systems.

That is powerful stuff.

Getting Started

gem install brief
brief --help