git-to-rentry

Automatically publish Rentry pages directly from GitHub.

Store your pages as Markdown, push to main, and GitHub Actions updates every Rentry page automatically.

Features

• 🚀 Publish multiple Rentry pages from one repository
• 📝 Write pages in plain Markdown
• 🎨 Reusable themes for shared styling
• 🔒 Separate edit codes for every page using GitHub Secrets
• ⚙️ Fully automated with GitHub Actions
• 🔍 Smart change detection — compares local vs live content and only posts when something actually changed

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Quick Start

1. Create your pages

Each directory inside pages/ becomes its own Rentry page.

pages/
├── blog/
│   ├── content.md
│   └── metadata.conf
├── about/
│   ├── content.md
│   └── metadata.conf
└── links/
    ├── content.md
    └── metadata.conf

content.md

# Hello

This page will be published to Rentry.

For supported Markdown syntax and formatting, see the Rentry Markdown guide.

metadata.conf

slug = hello
secret_ref = HELLO_EDIT_CODE

PAGE_TITLE = Hello
ACCESS_RECOMMENDED_THEME = dark

Required fields:

Field	Description
slug	The Rentry URL (https://rentry.co/<slug>)
secret_ref	Name of the GitHub secret (env var) that stores the edit code

Everything else is optional Rentry metadata.

For the complete list of metadata fields, see the Rentry Metadata documentation.

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2. (Optional) Use themes

Themes provide reusable metadata defaults.

Create a file like:

# themes/blog.conf

CONTAINER_MAX_WIDTH = 800px
CONTENT_TEXT_ALIGN = left

Then reference it from your page:

slug = hello
secret_ref = HELLO_EDIT_CODE
theme = blog

PAGE_TITLE = Hello

Theme values are merged first.

Values defined in metadata.conf always override the theme.

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3. Add GitHub Secrets

Each page needs its own Rentry edit code stored as a repository secret.

Example:

Secret name	Used by
BLOG_EDIT_CODE	pages/blog/metadata.conf
ABOUT_EDIT_CODE	pages/about/metadata.conf
HELLO_EDIT_CODE	pages/hello/metadata.conf

Repository → Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions → New repository secret

Warning

Save your Rentry edit code before adding it as a GitHub Secret.

Rentry only shows a page's edit code once when the page is created. GitHub Secrets are also write-only—once a secret is saved, GitHub will never display its value again. Editing a secret shows an empty value field, allowing you to replace the secret but not view its current value.

If you lose the edit code, you won't be able to update that Rentry page through this workflow.

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4. Expose the secrets to the workflow

In .github/workflows/publish.yml:

env:
  BLOG_EDIT_CODE: ${{ secrets.BLOG_EDIT_CODE }}
  ABOUT_EDIT_CODE: ${{ secrets.ABOUT_EDIT_CODE }}
  HELLO_EDIT_CODE: ${{ secrets.HELLO_EDIT_CODE }}

Every secret referenced by secret_ref must be available here.

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5. Enable GitHub Actions

Open the repository's Actions tab and enable workflows if prompted.

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6. Push

The workflow scans every directory in pages/ and publishes each page using its own edit code.

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Local Development

No external dependencies required — the publisher uses only Python standard library.

Dry run:

python src/publish_rentry.py pages/my-page --edit-code <code> --dry-run

Publish manually:

python src/publish_rentry.py pages/my-page --edit-code <code>

When content hasn't changed, the publisher prints SHA256 hashes and skips the POST with "Unchanged, skipping" — the "Published to" message only appears when an actual POST happens.

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Check whether local content differs from the published version:

python src/check_changes.py pages/my-page
python src/check_changes.py      # all pages

The script prints SHA256 hashes of both the local and live content for transparent comparison. Content is compared after normalizing line endings and decoding HTML entities (Rentry's edit page encodes <, >, & inside the textarea).

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Project Structure

.
├── _example/              # Example page
├── pages/                 # Your Rentry pages
├── themes/                # Reusable metadata presets
├── src/                   # Publisher and tooling
├── .github/workflows/     # GitHub Actions
├── CONTRIBUTING.md