At a Glance
- Why
- Many workflows need to generate content (reports, visualizations, documentation) on a schedule and publish it to static sites, but setting up and maintaining these pipelines is complex.
- Benefit
- Provides a reference pattern and toolkit for building scheduled generation workflows that produce static artifacts and publish them automatically.
- For
- Teams building automated reporting systems, documentation generators, or any workflow that needs to produce and publish static content on a regular schedule.
- Use
- Clone the reference pattern, adapt the generation logic to your needs, configure the schedule, and deploy. The pattern handles the orchestration and publishing automatically.
Architecture
Context Diagram
happenstance in the content generation workflow:
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Scheduler / Cron │
│ (triggers at intervals) │
└───────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────┘
│
│ triggers
▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ happenstance │
│ (generation → publish pattern) │
│ │
│ ┌──────────────┐ ┌──────────────┐ ┌──────────────┐ │
│ │ Generator │ │ Transform │ │ Publisher │ │
│ │ Runner │ │ Pipeline │ │ Engine │ │
│ └──────────────┘ └──────────────┘ └──────────────┘ │
└───┬────────────────────────────────────────┬────────────────┘
│ │
│ reads │ publishes to
▼ ▼
┌──────────────┐ ┌──────────────┐
│ Data Sources │ │ Static Host │
│ (APIs, DBs) │ │ (GH Pages) │
└──────────────┘ └──────────────┘
Internal Architecture
Components inside happenstance:
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ happenstance Core │ ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ │ │ ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ Orchestration Layer │ │ │ │ • Schedule management │ │ │ │ • Task coordination │ │ │ │ • Error handling & retries │ │ │ └───────────────┬───────────────────────────────────┘ │ │ │ │ │ ▼ │ │ ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ Generation Pipeline │ │ │ │ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ │ │ │ │ │ Data │ │Template │ │ Static │ │ │ │ │ │ Fetch │ │ Render │ │ Build │ │ │ │ │ └──────────┘ └──────────┘ └──────────┘ │ │ │ └───────────────┬───────────────────────────────────┘ │ │ │ │ │ ▼ │ │ ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ Publishing Layer │ │ │ │ • Git commit & push │ │ │ │ • Deployment triggers │ │ │ │ • Cache invalidation │ │ │ └───────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │ │ │ └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
How to Use
-
Clone the reference pattern
Start with the happenstance template:
git clone https://github.com/gitbrainlab/happenstance.git - Customize generation logic Modify the generator scripts to fetch your data sources, apply your transformations, and produce your desired static output.
- Configure scheduling Set up cron jobs, GitHub Actions workflows, or other schedulers to trigger the generation pipeline at your desired intervals.
- Set publishing target Configure where generated artifacts should be published (GitHub Pages, S3, Netlify, etc.) and set up deployment credentials.
- Deploy and monitor Deploy the workflow, monitor execution logs, and refine generation and publishing logic based on results.