Commands

Toucan includes the following built-in subcommands to generate static sites: init, generate, watch, and serve.

Init

The init command initializes a new Toucan project. It takes an optional argument for the project directory name (defaults to site if not specified). It creates the necessary directories and files for your project inside the specified directory.

toucan init my-site
# 2024-12-15T12:15:32+0100 info toucan : [toucan_cli] Preparing source files.
# 2024-12-15T12:15:34+0100 info toucan : [toucan_cli] Preparing theme files.
#2024-12-15T12:15:34+0100 info toucan : [toucan_cli] 'my-site' was prepared successfully.
cd my-site

Generate

The generate command builds static files from the source folder. The static site will be available in a destination directory, which can be customized. Additionally, the site’s base URL can be overridden, which is useful for local development.

toucan generate ./src ./docs --base-url http://localhost:3000/

Watch

The watch command monitors a source directory for changes and automatically rebuilds the distribution files, regenerating the site whenever changes are detected.

Please note that the watch command is only available on macOS during the beta release.​

toucan watch ./src ./docs --base-url http://localhost:3000/

Serve

The serve command starts a web server to serve a specified directory. It allows serving a folder with an optional port number. By default, your site will be accessible at http://localhost:3000/ if run as follows:

toucan serve ./docs -h localhost -p 3000
toucan serve ./docs --host localhost --port 3000

You can specify a hostname and port parameter to bind your web server to a given address. This allows you to preview your website at http://localhost:3000/.