Laravel file generator

This is a Laravel package which helps you automate creation of files.

Benefits

If you create a type of file frequently, you can automate it and improve productivity.
Prevent "context switching" where you lose focus for 30 seconds while you create new files, directories and populate it with boilerplate.
Comes with several built-in boilerplates. Easy to share your own as github gists.
All boilerplates and generators are part of your repository, letting you share standard templates with your team.
Find things like artisan make:model and artisan make:controller useful? You can make your own.
All boilerplates can be written as blade templates.

Quick Start

Step 1: Install the package

$ composer require skyronic/laravel-file-generator

Step 2: Publish the "boilerplates" - an included set of useful boilerplates like PHP Classes.

$ php artisan vendor:publish --tag='boilerplates'

Step 3: You can list all the installed boilerplates

$ php artisan generate:list

+---------------+------------------------------+
| Type          | Name                         |
+---------------+------------------------------+
| css           | CSS File                     |
| js            | JavaScript File              |
| php:class     | PHP Class in 'app' Directory |
| php:trait     | PHP Trait in 'app' Directory |
| view          | Blade Template               |
+---------------+------------------------------+

Use `artisan generate <type>` to create a new file!

Step 5: You can create a php class now:

$ php artisan generate php:class "Support/Helpers/AwesomeHelper" --extends "BaseHelper" --constructor

Created file [ app/Support/Helpers/AwesomeHelper.php ]

The generator php:class creates one by default in. You can now open app/Support/Helpers/AwesomeHelper.php

<?php

namespace App\Support\Helpers\AwesomeHelper;

class AwesomeHelper extends BaseHelper  {
    public function __construct () {

    }
}

Step 6: Create your own template:

$ php artisan generate:new mytemplate --description "My New Template"

Created new boilerplate at [ resources/boilerplates/mytemplate.boilerplate.txt ]

Understanding Boilerplate Template

Open the file created by Step 6. You will see something like this:

{
   "name": "My Template",
   "out": "edit/me/{{ $name }}.txt",
   "params": {
        "myParam": "optional"
   }
}
---

Template goes here. Blade syntax works. You can use a parameter like {{ $myParam }}

There's two parts to the file, separated by ---.

The top part is the configuration of how the template should behave, and also specifying parameters
The bottom part is the actual template which will be.

The configuration object

Let's take a closer look at this config object:

{
   "name": "My Template",
   "out": "edit/me/{{ $name }}.txt",
   "params": {
        "myParam": "optional"
   }
}

This should be valid JSON. The key name is the name of the template used for generate:list. Not to be confusued with the $name variable.

Setting Output Path

If you try to run the template with something like:

$ php artisan generate mytemplate foo/bar

The output path here will be: edit/me/foo/bar.txt. $name contains the second parameter, and even the strings can use blade so {{ $name }} will produce the path.

Parameters

Parameters allow you to customize and change the content of the file. For example, here we have myParam. So running this boilerplate with

$ php artisan generate mytemplate foo/bar --myParam "Hello"

Will result in the text file:

Template goes here. Blade syntax works. You can use a parameter like Hello

Flag Parameters

Here's a simple template (some elements omitted for brevity).

"params": {
    "someFlag": "optional"
}
---
This is always visible.

@if($someFlag)
This is only visible when the flag is set
@endif

Now we can run it like:

# $someFlag will be set to false
$ php artisan generate mytemplate foo/bar 

# $someFlag will be set to true
$ php artisan generate mytemplate foo/bar --someFlag

Required Parameters

"params": {
    "className": "required"
}
---
class {{ $className }} {
   
}

$ php artisan generate mytemplate foo/bar

  [Skyronic\FileGenerator\FileGeneratorException]
  Needs argument [ className ]

Optional Parameters

"params": {
    "authorName": "optional"
}
---
@if($authorName)
/* Author: {{ $authorName }} */
@endif
class MyClass {
   
}

You can recognize the if and endif as blade conditional structures. If authorName is set like:

$ php artisan generate mytemplate foo/bar --authorName John

Then the value is set to "John". Else it's null.

Default Values

If you set the parameter to anything except flag or optional or required it's considered a default value.

"params": {
    "copyrightYear": "2017"
}
---

/* Copyright (c) {{ $copyrightYear }} */

The value is going to be set to 2017 unless specified otherwise.

# Set to default value of 2017
$ php artisan generate mytemplate foo/bar

# Override the value to 2016
$ php artisan generate mytemplate foo/bar --copyrightYear 2016

Tips for writing boilerplates

A template like vue__component.boilerplate.txt will become vue:component for cleaner organization. You can use __ in your own templates.
Important: Pass a --dry-run flag like php artisan generate --dry-run mytemplate foo/bar --myParam "paramvalue" to display the output in console. This lets you iterate and fix any potential issues without creating files.
You can use most of laravel's helper functions and even some other PHP classes with some advanced blade and the @php directive
You can use paths like foo/bar/{{ $name }} and FileGenerator will automatically adjust directory separators on windows.

If you're using this tool to generate blade files, using keywords like @section and @extends might not work. Instead use @@section and @@extends

For example:

{
   "name": "Blade Template",
   "out": "resources/views/{{ $name }}.blade.php",
   "params": {
       "title": "required"
   }
}
---
@@extends('layouts.main')
@@section("title", '{{ $title }}')

@@section('content')

@@endsection

Formatter

Sometimes you might need to do some string manipulation. Later versions of File Generator will contain more comprehensive string manipulation later.

Camel-case, Snake-case, etc

You can use Laravel's built in helpers for things like camel_case and others.

Basename from path

If you've got something like app/Support/MyHelper.php and want to extract MyHelper you can use Format::baseName ($path) which extracts a classname like entity, ignoring any file extension.

Getting a namespace from path

Namespaces are a bit tricky, since they need to render forward-slashes. FileGenerator contains a simple format helper which can generate a namespace from a given file path. It uses the laravel app directory and App namespace by default.

// $path = "app/Support/Helpers/AwesomeHelper.php"
Format::getNamespace ($path)
// -> "App\Support\Helpers"

// For non `app` directories, you need to manually specify namespace routes
// $path = "tests/Unit/HelperTests/AwesomeHelperTest.php"
Format::getNamespace ($path, 'tests', "Tests")
// -> "Tests\Unit\HelperTests"

Example: PHP Class generator

First, be sure that you've run php artisan vendor:publish --tag='boilerplates' and check app/resources/boilerplates/php__class.boilerplate.txt

{
   "name": "PHP Class in 'app' Directory",
   "out": "app/{{ $name }}.php",
   "params": {
       "extends": "optional",
       "constructor": "flag"
   }
}
---
<?php

namespace {{ Format::getNamespace($path) }};

class {{ Format::baseName($name) }} @if($extends)extends {{ $extends }}@endif  {
@if($constructor)
    public function __construct () {

    }
@endif
}

The example should be pretty self explanatory. But can illustrate that even a little blade templating can go a long way.