t - Tiny template plugin for vim

A minimalist template / scaffolding engine for text editors.

Description

This is a simple plug-in one could use to get template files per file type, which will be used as a 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.

cli

Provides a basic CLI tvim (1) 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 possible (#atom)

vim

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

Installation

cli

$ npm install tvim -g

vim

Using vim-plug

Plug 'vimlab/t.vim', { 'do': 'npm install -g' }
" npm: --prod to skip devDependencies
" npm: --cache-min Infinity to speed up install process
" npm: -g to make tvim available in $PATH

For other package managers, make sure to run npm install -g 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, conf/defs.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 conf/*.json files.

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:

First try loading by filename
Then by filetype default.filetype (or extension)

For instance, vim foo.js will try to load ~/.vim/templates/foo.js, then ~/.vim/templates/default.js.

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

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 defs.json will be used instead of the defaults. If 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 conf/defs.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'
};

If the buffer is within a project with a package.json, every field is defined as a template variable as well.

Globs

The conf/globs.json file manages a list of glob patterns to register with a template file

Ex. "bin/*": "bin/cli.js" would expand every file matching the bin/* pattern with templates/bin/cli.js.

{
  "bin/*": "bin/cli.js",
  "app/models/*.js": "rails/js/model.js",
  "server.js": "node/http/server.js"
}

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.