Rails2static

Generate a deployable static site from a server-rendered Rails app. Add the gem, run a rake task, and get a _site/ directory with HTML, CSS, JS, and images ready to deploy anywhere.

Rails2static uses Rack::Test to call your Rails app directly — no running server needed. It crawls your app through the full middleware stack, rewrites links for static hosting, and collects all referenced assets.

Live example: rails2static.ianterrell.com

Add to your Gemfile:

gem "rails2static"

Then bundle install.

Generate the initializer:

rails generate rails2static:install

rake rails2static
# or
rake static:generate

This will:

1. BFS-crawl your app starting from /
2. Rewrite internal links for static hosting
3. Collect all referenced CSS, JS, images, and fonts
4. Copy public/ directory files (favicon, robots.txt, etc.)
5. Write everything to _site/

Preview the result locally:

rake static:preview

This starts a local server at http://localhost:8000 serving your generated site.

The install generator creates config/initializers/rails2static.rb with all options commented out. Uncomment and adjust as needed:

Rails2static.configure do |config|
  config.output_dir = "_site"              # Output directory (default: "_site")
  config.entry_paths = ["/"]               # Starting paths for the crawl (default: ["/"])
  config.host = "www.example.com"          # Host header sent with requests (default: "www.example.com")
  config.trailing_slash = true             # /about -> /about/index.html (default: true)
                                           # false  -> /about -> /about.html
  config.exclude_patterns = [%r{/admin}]   # Regex patterns to skip (default: [])
  config.include_assets = true             # Collect CSS/JS/images (default: true)
  config.max_pages = 10_000                # Safety limit on pages crawled (default: 10,000)
end

The _site/ output is plain static files that work on any host. Some options:

Connect your GitHub repo in the Cloudflare Pages dashboard, then configure:

• Root directory: your app's directory (e.g. demo)
• Build command: bundle install && rake rails2static
• Build output: _site

Every push to main triggers a rebuild. Cloudflare also creates preview deployments for pull requests.

Upload _site/ to any static host — GitHub Pages, Netlify, S3, Vercel, or just rsync to a server.

• Crawler — BFS from entry paths using Rack::Test::Session. Normalizes paths, follows redirects internally, detects cycles, skips external links, warns on 404s.
• Link Extractor — Parses HTML with Nokogiri for <a>, <link>, <script>, <img>, srcset, <video>, and <audio> references.
• Link Rewriter — Rewrites <a href> values so links work on static hosts. Skips external links, anchors, mailto/tel, and paths with file extensions.
• Asset Collector — Fetches all asset URLs found in HTML via Rack::Test. Parses CSS for url() and @import references and fetches those recursively.
• Writer — Writes HTML as path/index.html (trailing slash mode) or path.html. Non-HTML content keeps its original path. Binary content uses binwrite.

The demo/ directory contains a fully working Rails blog app that showcases rails2static. It uses SQLite with a pre-seeded database so you can try it immediately:

cd demo
bundle install
rake rails2static     # generates _site/
rake static:preview   # serves it at http://localhost:8000

See it live at rails2static.ianterrell.com.

MIT