Stacks API

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Stacks API v13 for Stacks 5.0

< Stacks Developer API

Getting Started
Create and install a minimal theme.
Theme Bundles
Bundle structure, resources and development bundles.
Info.plist Reference
Theme metadata, controls, assets and libraries.
Templates
Template IDs, frontmatter and page composition.
Runtime Properties
Site, page, navigation and content values.
Inheritance
Parent themes and template overrides.
Reference Themes
What Base, Blank and Sample demonstrate.
Known Unknowns
Behaviour that is not yet fully specified.

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Theme API

The Theme API lets a bundle provide the complete HTML document around a Stacks page. A theme can define the document structure, metadata, navigation, page content area, footer, stylesheets, scripts and controls shown in the theme inspector.

Themes use a new template language based on named templates, YAML frontmatter and runtime objects such as site, page and content. This is separate from the %...% replacement syntax used by ordinary stack templates.

Documentation status

The Theme API does not yet have a published, authoritative reference. This section is based on:

The theme.schema.json file bundled with Stacks.
The bundled Base, Blank and Sample themes.
Behaviour observed while developing themes in Stacks.

The bundled schema calls itself an inferred schema. It is useful evidence, but it also says that the runtime may support more values than the schema currently lists.

Pages in this section use the following labels:

Schema — explicitly described by the bundled schema.
Bundled theme — demonstrated by Base, Blank or Sample.
Observed — verified during development, but not formally specified.
Unconfirmed — accepted or suggested by available files, but its complete behaviour is unknown.

What a theme controls

A theme can provide:

The top-level HTML document and language attribute.
The contents of <head> and <body>.
Placement of Stacks-generated CSS and JavaScript.
Navigation generated from the site page hierarchy.
Theme-wide controls through customItems.
Static assets and shared libraries.
Reusable partial templates.
A parent theme whose templates can be selectively overridden.

Start with Getting Started, then use the remaining pages as a practical reference.