Question

I’m using rake to create a Table of contents from a bunch of static HTML files.

The question is how do I insert it into all files from within rake?

I have a <ul id="toc"> in each file to aim for. The entire content of that I want to replace.

I was thinking about using Nokogiri or similar to parse the document and replace the DOM node ul#toc. However, I don’t like the idea that I have to write the parser’s DOM to the HTML file. What if it changes my layouts/indents etc.??

Any thoughts/ideas? Or perhaps links to working examples?

Answer 1

I ended up with an idea similar to what Mike Woodhouse suggested. Only not using erb templates (as I wanted the source files to be freely editable also by non ruby-lovers)

  def update_toc(filename)
    raise "FATAL: Requires self.toc= ... before replacing TOC in files!" if @toc.nil?
    content = File.read(filename)
    content.gsub(/<h2 class="toc">.+?<\/ul>/, @toc)
  end

  def replace_toc_in_all_files
    @file_names.each do |name|
      content = update_toc(name)
      File.open(name, "w") do |io|
        io.write content
      end
    end
  end