Exgen

Quickly generate Elixir apps from templates.

$ mix exgen.new some_app -t https://github.com/rwdaigle/exgen-plug-simple.git --app-name some_app --module SomeApp
* creating some_app/lib/some_app.ex
* creating some_app/lib/some_app/router.ex

Overview

Templates are just EEx files that are evaluated at runtime. A simple template might be a single file with a variable substitution in EEx form:

defmodule <%= module %>.Router do
end

Use Exgen's simple CLI to create a new app from this template:

$ mix exgen.new target_dir -t /path/to/template --module MyApp

Which will create a single file in the target_dir with the following contents:

defmodule MyApp.Router do
end

Installation

Exgen is distributed as a set of Mix tasks (much like Phoenix generators). Install them via Mix:

$ mix archive.install https://github.com/rwdaigle/exgen/raw/master/archives/exgen-0.5.1.ez

The tasks will then be available in Mix under the exgen namespace:

$ mix -h | grep "exgen."
mix exgen.new     # Generate a new project from a template

Usage

Exgen operates by fetching a templatized app from a remote git repo or a local source. For instance, to quickly generate a basic Plug web app from this template:

$ mix exgen.new some_app -t https://github.com/rwdaigle/exgen-plug-simple.git --app-name some_app --module SomeApp
* creating some_app/lib/some_app.ex
* creating some_app/lib/some_app/router.ex

If you have an app template on your local filesystem you can just point to its path:

$ mix exgen.new some_app -t ~/dev/exgen-templates/exgen-plug-simple --app-name some_app --module SomeApp
* creating some_app/lib/some_app.ex
* creating some_app/lib/some_app/router.ex

Any variables needed by the template can be passed in from the CLI using switches. So if a template requires the app_name and module variables, use the --app-name and --module switches as above (switches are automatically underscored before being exposed to the template EEx context).

Creating templates

For easy consistency and recognition, templates should be named with the following structure: exgen-category-purpose. For instance, a simple web app using only Plug is called exgen-plug-simple.

A template is just a set of EEx files with <%= variable %> statements in the file bodies (and even the file names themselves).

|- <%= app_name %>.ex
|- mix.exs
|- <%= app_name %>
  |- router.ex

This template generated with the --app-name my_app switch will result in the following file structure:

|- my_app.ex
|- mix.exs
|- my_app
  |- router.ex

Templates

The following exgen templates are available from the community:

If you would like yours listed here, edit this file and submit a PR

App	Command w/ switches
Simple Plug web app	`$ mix exgen.new -t https://github.com/rwdaigle/exgen-plug-simple.git --app-name my_app --module MyApp`

Contributing

Testing

Run automated tests:

$ mix test

You can also manually test the tasks by installing the archive locally:

$ mix do archive.build, archive.install

Release

Exgen is distributed as a mix archive. Build the archive with:

$ mix archive.build
$ mv exgen-*.ez archives/

Todo

Some things I'd like to add include:

Support testing workflow for template authors
Silence git output (in tests at least)
Use test tags to segment tests by remote/local