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Hua Related Articles Support

By William Jeffrey Rankin, Sun Aug 3 2025

Revision 294 of Hua supports automatic generation of related articles. Simply append one or more IDs to the appropriate article in the entries file. Here's an example from this blog:

00165,planet-rs Improvements,prs-improvements.md,development|astronomy,Sat Jul 26 2025,William Jeffrey Rankin,mailto:jeffrey.rankin@me.com,00031|00032|00090

Articles are listed in the same order they appear in the entry. Hua will display (and log) a warning should the related article ID not exist in the entries file:

Related article error in 000020. Article ID 000017 does not exist. Ignoring.

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    Hua Orphans Mode

    By William Jeffrey Rankin, Thu Feb 13 2025

    Hua has an "orphans" mode that enables the identification of files that exist in the output directory but not in the entries file. Here's an example using the sample content files:

    $ pwsh hua.ps1 example.cfg -O
    orphan-1.html
    

    As there may be perfectly valid reasons for the file to exist (e.g., a file referenced in generated content like a PDF or a download) Hua takes no action beyond listing the orphan filename.

    It occurred to me this mode could also be used to look for orphans in the content directory. All that's required is to change the output_dir variable value in the Hua config file to the location of the content directory. In the example.cfg file change this:

    ...    
    output_dir     =  .\blog
    ...
    

    to this:

    ...    
    output_dir     =  .\content
    ...
    

    and run Hua in the same way as above. Content is not processed in orphans mode. Don't forget to change output_dir to its prior value!

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        Hua Linux Package

        By William Jeffrey Rankin, Mon Dec 30 2024

        A Hua tar archive is now available for Linux hosts. It is designed to be installed in /usr/local. An executable shell script is included (hua) as well as a man page.

        Like the zip version, it includes a sample web site. To try it out, run the following:

        $ mkdir temp
        $ cd temp
        $ cp /usr/local/share/hua/example.cfg .
        $ cp -r /usr/local/share/hua/content .
        $ mkdir blog
        $ hua example.cfg
        

        The installation looks like this:

        \---usr
            \---local
                +---bin
                |       hua
                |       hua-paging.ps1
                |       hua.ps1
                |
                \---share
                    +---hua
                    |   |   entries.csv
                    |   |   example.cfg
                    |   |   Hua.pdf
                    |   |   meta.csv
                    |   |   MIT-License.txt
                    |   |
                    |   +---content
                    |   |   |   another.html
                    |   |   |   first.html
                    |   |   |   latest.html
                    |   |   |   markdown-2.md
                    |   |   |   markdown.md
                    |   |   |   new-article.md
                    |   |   |   new-tag.md
                    |   |   |   no-content.html
                    |   |   |
                    |   |   \---inc
                    |   |           comments.html
                    |   |           footer.html
                    |   |           header.html
                    |   |           read_more.html
                    |   |
                    |   \---markdown
                    |           md-template.html
                    |
                    \---man
                        \---man1
                                hua.1
        

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            Running Hua as a Scheduled Task (or Cron Job)

            By William Jeffrey Rankin, Thu Dec 5 2024

            Hua can be run at regular intervals using a scheduled task (on Windows) or a cron job (on Linux/Cygwin). On Windows, I use a simple batch script:

            D:
            cd Documents\Hua
            D:\PowerShell-7.4.6-win-x64\pwsh .\hua.ps1 .\hua.cfg
            

            Then I create a scheduled task. Two examples are shown below: the first runs daily, the second every hour.

            schtasks /create /sc daily /st 23:50 /tn "Hua" /tr D:\Documents\Hua.bat
            schtasks /create /sc hourly /st 08:05 /tn "Hua" /tr D:\Documents\Hua.bat
            

            On Linux and Cygwin it's a little simpler since the batch script is not necessary. The equivalent cron jobs look like this:

            50 23 * * * cd Hua; pwsh hua.ps1 hua.cfg
            5 * * * * cd Hua; pwsh hua.ps1 hua.cfg
            

            Note that in the case of Cygwin, you'll need to use the full path to pwsh:

            50 23 * * * cd Hua; /cygdrive/c/PowerShell-7.4.6-win-x64/pwsh ./hua.ps1 ./hua.cfg
            

            If you want to suppress Hua's output, direct it to /dev/null as shown below. Output is still sent to Hua's log file.

            50 23 * * * cd Hua; pwsh hua.ps1 hua.cfg > /dev/null
            

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                Hua Error Handling Enhancements

                By William Jeffrey Rankin, Sat Nov 23 2024

                Revision 195 includes improvements to Hua's handling of non-critical errors. These are instances where Hua will continue processing all content except for the suspect entries. Examples of this include zero-length (empty) article files, entries lacking a filename, and entries lacking an ID. When possible, the entry ID is shown so the record can be quickly located and fixed.

                The latest Hua download package demonstrates these errors. For example:

                jeffr@Callisto: ~/Documents/Hua $ pwsh ./hua.ps1 ./hua.cfg 
                Content file error. File (ID: 000045) is empty. Skipping.
                Entries file error. There is an entry (ID: 000040) without a filename. Skipping.
                ...
                Entries file error. There is an entry without an ID. Skipping.
                

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