t - Tiny template plugin for vim

A minimalist template / scaffolding engine for text editors.

It provides a basic CLI tvim to parse and evaluate templates using Handlebars, and write the result to STDOUT.

It was designed to work along the included Vim / Neovim plugin, but integrations to other text editors should be a simple process (#atom)

The vim plugin is heavily based on tpope former ztemplate plugin, that was found in:

https://github.com/tpope/tpope/blob/master/.vim/plugin/ztemplate.vim.

Unfortunately, ztemplate is no more and I cannot find it anymore. This plugin is based on the git history of my vimfiles repo where I once checked in a copy of ztemplate.vim

Description

This is a simple plug-in allowing to have template files per file type, which will be used as starting point when creating new buffers.

Template files may contain variables ({{ title }}), which are expanded at the time of buffer creation. The main purpose of the templates is to add boilerplate code to new files.

Installation

cli

$ npm install tvim -g

vim

Using vim-plug

Plug 'vimlab/t.vim', { do: 'npm install' }

For other package managers, make sure to run npm install within the bundle directory.

atom

wip

CLI

Description

tvim command is used to parse templates and evaluate them with Handlebars.

It builds template variables based on the provided filename, t.json configuration file and local project package.json properties, if it exists.

Options

• --file - Must be set to the created file (in Vim this is the new Buffer filepath)
• --template - Full path value leading the Handlebars template

Configuration

tvim behavior and default variables can be configured with t.json file.

• Definitions A simple { name: command } mapping to globally define template variables.
• Globs Configure minimatch based templates. Great to setup a common boilerplate for Models when creating app/models/*.js files.

Templates

Vim When editing a new file (not created yet, eg. BufNewFile is triggered), the plugin will try to load a template from ~/vim/templates directory.

Templates are loaded using the following search order:

1. First try loading by filename
2. Then by filetype filetype.template
3. Then by a more general one t.filetype

For instance, vim foo.js will try to load ~/.vim/templates/foo.js, then ~/.vim/templates/javascript.template, then ~/.vim/templates/t.javascript.

See my vim templates folder for a list of templates for general web / nodejs / vim development.

Note The logic to find the best template per filename and extension is in vimscript, but may be ported to the cli for easier integration in other editors.

Variables

Template variables are Mustache like template placeholder: eg. {{ title }}

The following variables are available for expansion in templates:

• {{ day }}, {{ year }}, {{ month }}

Current day of the month, year, and month of the year, as numeric values.

• {{ date }}

Current date in YYYY-mm-dd format.

• {{ time }}

Current time in HH:MM format.

• {{ datetime }}

Current full date (date and time) in YYYY-mm-dd HH:MM format.

• {{ filename }}

File name, without extension.

• {{ ext }}

File extension (component after the last period).

• {{ basename }}

File name, with extension.

• {{ mail }}

E-mail address of the current user. This is the value of git config --global user.email

• {{ user }}

Current logged-in user name ($USER)

• {{ license }}

Expands to the string MIT by default or the value of package.json "license" property.

• {{ hostname }}

Current host name.

Additionnaly, any variable definitions you defined in t.json will be used instead of the defaults. If a the filename is within a project with a package.json (find up), its fields are used to expand corresponding variables in templates.

Overriding / Defining Variables

You can change the default value of any predefined variables, or add new ones using :TemplateConfig to edit t.json configuration file.

For instance, to change the default value of the { name } variables in templates, use { name: command } key / value pair:

• name Variable name
• command System command to execute and evaluate STDOUT result

{
  "user": "git config --global user.name"
}

Here is the default values for all predefined template variables.

// File
let ext = path.extname(filepath);
let basename = path.basename(filepath);
let filename = basename.replace(ext, '');

// Date
let day = moment().format('d');
let year = moment().format('YYYY');
let month = moment().format('M');
let date = moment().format('YYYY-M-d')
let datetime = moment().format('YYYY-M-d HH:mm')

// Misc
let user = process.env.USER;
let definitions = {
  hostname: 'hostname',
  mail:     'git config --global user.email',
  name:     'git config --global user.name'
};

Commands

Template

:Template can be used to expand the template content in the current buffer.

TemplateEdit

:TemplateEdit is an helper to :edit ~/.vim/templates/${filetype}.template and quickly add or edit a template for the current filetype.

TemplateConfig

:TemplateConfig is an helper to :edit t.json file used to define template variables. You can simply add, edit or remove definitions by editing the JSON content and saving the file.

Work in progress