@contemplr/contemplate

This tool helps you improve your templating flow, allowing you to specify more in-depth customization capability for users. Customizable variables or parameters within a project can be specified by the template owner, and a user will be prompted to specify values for these variables/parameters.

@contemplr/contemplate is meant to add more flexibility to creating and managing your project templates.

Usage

Step 1 : Creating your template project

To use this library, you will need to create a file named contvar.json in your project root.

Example from spring-sample-auth-jwt:

spring-sample-auth-jwt
├── .mvn/wrapper
├── src/main
├── .gitignore
├── contvar.json

Configuration in contvar.json

The configuration file allows you to specify customizable variables/parameters within the project.

Example: spring-sample-auth-jwt/contvar.json

{
  "variables": [
    {
      "name": "contvarAppName",
      "prompt": "What is your project name? e.g. myspringjwtexample",
      "checks": [
        {
          "check": "^[A-z]+$",
          "error": "Project name must be only letters"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "contvarDomainName",
      "prompt": "Specify domain name of the project? e.g. com.{your input}",
      "checks": [
        {
          "check": "^[A-z0-9]+$",
          "error": "Project name must be only letters or numbers"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "contvarX-Access-Token",
      "prompt": "Specify access token response header name?",
      "value": "X-Access-Token",
      "checks": [
        {
          "check": "^[A-z-]+$",
          "error": "Project name must be only letters and hyphen"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "contvarX-Refresh-Token",
      "prompt": "Specify refresh token response header name?",
      "value": "X-Refresh-Token",
      "checks": [
        {
          "check": "^[A-z-]+$",
          "error": "Project name must be only letters and hyphen"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Configuration keys

• variables represents a list of all customizable variables and parameter in the template. Each variable can either be a content in a file or a file name that can be customized.

  Example (file content): spring-sample-auth-jwt/pom.xml

  <project>
      <groupId>com.contvarDomainName</groupId>
      <artifactId>contvarAppName</artifactId>
      <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
      <name>contvarAppName</name>
      <description>contvarAppName</description>
  </project>

  Example (file name): spring-sample-auth-jwt/src/.../AuthController.java

  public void reauthorize(@RequestHeader("contvarX-Refresh-Token") String refreshToken) {
      ...
  }                            

  Example (file name): spring-sample-auth-jwt/src/.../example

  spring-sample-auth-jwt
  ├── controllers
  ├── entities
  ├── ...
  ├── contvarAppNameApplication.java

  N.B: Variable names must start with the keyword contvar, the library uses this to identify what can be customized.

• prompt (optional) property represents some explanation of the variable to be customized. You can use this as a prompt question to the user. If this is not provided, a default prompt will be used Enter the value for "variable name":.

• checks (optional) represents a list of constraints a template owner can specify against the inputs of user. Each child of this property takes in:

  • check property a Regex that'll be used to test inputs
  • error property an error message to show a user when an input fails a check

• excludeFoldersRegex (optional) property is used to specify the files or folders you would like to be excluded entirely from customization. Example: "excludeFoldersRegex": [/.mvn/, /node_modules/]

Step 2 : Installing the tool

The library is a NPM package can be installed using any of the commands below:

Installing locally

npm install @contemplr/contemplate

Installing globally

npm install -g @contemplr/contemplate

or in the latest NPM version

npm install @contemplr/contemplate --location=global

Step 3 : Using the tool

Additional: @contemplr/contemplate requires that you have git CLI installed on your system. It depends on git to clone your project.

contemplate repository_url [destination_folder]

• repository_url represents the template project url. This can be a repository hosted on any VCS platform
• destination_folder (optional) the destination folder that this project should be created/cloned into

Example

contemplate https://github.com/contemplr/spring-sample-auth-jwt.git NewApp

or using npx

npx @contemplr/contemplate https://github.com/contemplr/spring-sample-auth-jwt.git NewApp

For Help

contemplate [-h]