Since this site is getting larger and it’s running on Octopress, the rake generate and rake preview processes are getting slower. Enter rake isolate["x"] to isolate the site down to the selected post. But isolating requires me to note the file name down, there is too much to remember and type and I am lazy.

So have created two macros and a script to speed this process up.

Note: You must run these commands in the root of the Octopress folder, else they will not work at all!

Post

The old, standard way

To create a post in Octopress, isolate it and preview it in the browser, you need to run the following steps:

Create the Post:

$ rake new_post["Octopress Post and Publish"]

Isolate the post using the generated file name:

rake isolate["octopress-post-and-publish"]

And generate and start the preview thread:

rake generate
rake preview

Note that I have already hacked the new_post function in my Rakefile to also log this to Day One and launch Byword, see my post on Bread Crumbs in Day One, so those steps are not shown.

The new way

For this post, I typed in:

$ post Octopress Post and Publish

Note that there is no punctuation after the post command, less for me to type. The script concatenates all parameters into a single title string. The result of the command shows that it does all the steps I did manually, including figuring out the file name, and leaving me in a preview thread:

:: rake new_post["Octopress Post and Publish"]
mkdir -p source/_posts
:: rake isolate["octopress-post-and-publish"]
:: rake generate
:: rake preview
[2012-07-18 18:01:34] INFO  WEBrick 1.3.1
[2012-07-18 18:01:34] INFO  ruby 1.9.2 (2011-07-09) [x86_64-darwin11.2.0]
[2012-07-18 18:01:34] INFO  WEBrick::HTTPServer#start: pid=35734 port=4000

Publish

The old, standard way

I would use ^C to stop the preview thread, then:

$ rake integrate
$ rake gen_deploy

The new way

Now I just use ^C to stop the preview thread, and:

$ publish

The macros and scripts

I created the following ruby script to handle the post function. If you want the “Open in Byword” function, uncomment Line 29: open "#{path}" -a Byword (Untested)

#! /usr/bin/ruby

# post.rb
# Hilton Lipschitz (https://hiltmon.com) @hiltmon
# Use and modify freely, attribution appreciated
#
# Create a new Octopress post, isolate it, generate the
# site and leave me with a preview thread running.
#
# MUST BE RUN in the Octopress root folder
#
# Usage
# $ new This is a post
#
# NOTE: Do not wrap the parameters in quotes

# Make the title
post_title = ARGV.join(' ')

# Create the post
puts ":: rake new_post[\"#{post_title}\"]"
process = `rake new_post["#{post_title}"]`

# Parse out the generated filename
file_key = nil
process.split('\r').each do |line|
  next unless line =~ /Creating new post:/
  path = line.split(': ')[1]
  # `open "#{path}" -a Byword`
  file_basename = path.sub('source/_posts/', '').sub('.markdown', '')
  file_key = file_basename[11..(file_basename.length)].chomp
end

# Isolate, generate and preview
unless file_key.nil?
  puts ":: rake isolate[\"#{file_key}\"]"
  `rake isolate["#{file_key}"]`
  puts ":: rake generate"
  `rake generate`
  puts ":: rake preview"
  `rake preview`
end

I then added the following two macros to my .bash_profile (OS X users only). Note that I keep all my custom scripts in ~/Scripts/:

function post {
  ~/Scripts/post.rb $*
}

function publish {
  rake integrate
  rake gen_deploy
}

These work for all my Octopress sites. It allows me to get to the post faster, preview that it looks right and publish the site with ease.