Clojure Developers Blog With Github Gists

Whilst Github is a great way to share a whole repository of code, sometimes you want to talk about the design and challenges of developing your code, that discussion is often best done in a blog post.

So how do you put your lovingly crafted Clojure code (or anything else) into a blog so that it looks as beautiful as it does in Emacs? Lets take a look at Github Gists.

Enter the Github Gist

A gist is a simple way to share code snippets with others, although unlike services like PasteBucket the gists are automatically versioned, forkable and usable as a git repository.

Adding Gists to Hexo

Including a Gist inside a blog post is very easy when using Hexo, as it provides a special tag. Simply get the number of your Github Gist and include it in the gist tag as follows

{ % gist gist-id filename % }
{ % gist 37766464 project.clj % }

There should be no space between { and % or % and }

Adding Gists to Blogger

To add these gists to Blogger requires a bit of JavaScript and is a real pain because of how constrained Blogger is. Luckily Moski Doski has done the hard work for us and put it on a Github repository to share.

At the end of each of your blog posts, include the following code using the HTML editor:

<script src="https://raw.github.com/moski/gist-Blogger/master/public/gistLoader.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Here is the same code as a gist:

Now to include any gist template just add the following anywhere in your blog post.

<div class="gistLoad" data-id="GistID" id="gist-GistID">Loading ....</div>

Again, the same code is available as a gist:

Replace the GistID with your gist id number, shown at the top of the gist you created (or gist you found and want to share with the world).

My own example

When I first started using Emacs I created a basic init.el configuration for Clojure. This loads all the base packages you need for making Emacs 24 Clojure aware in one init.el file. If you drop this init.el file into your ~/.emacs.d/ folder and run Emacs 24 for the first time then all the necessary packages will be automatically downloaded and added Emacs.

In Summary

Using Github Gists in your blog post is a simple way to view code in a consistent way, at the same time providing a simple way to share code and configuration with others.

Some blogging platforms like Hexo make it easy to add Gists, some like Blogger require way too much encouragement.

Thank you.
@jr0cket

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