SimpleTemplater is dead-simple solution for creating generators. It strongly uses convention over configuration, so you don’t have to write loads of code to generate one stupid plain text README.

Even if SimpleTemplater is more API for writting generators, it has some custom included.

If you want to create your new generator, this is what you are looking for. Just run simple-templater create stub my_generator and that’s it!

• --flat | --no-flat (default: --no-flat)
• --full | --no-full (default: --full)
• --setup-hook | --no-setup-hook (default: --setup-hook)
• --postprocess-hook | --no-postprocess-hook (default: --postprocess-hook)

Project generator can generate new Ruby project.

• --full-name="Jakub Stastny"
• --git-repository if you want to create new Git repository and do the initial commit (default: will ask you)
• --github-user=botanicus (default: ENV[“USER”])
• --github-repository=simple-templater (default: same as name of the new project)

You would probably want to use simple templater for your own generators, here is how:

require "simple-templater"

templater = SimpleTemplater.new(:rango)
if defined?(Gem) # try to find generators installed as gems
  templater.discovery!
else
  warn "Running without RubyGems which means SimpleTemplater won't be able to find generators distributed as a Gems."
  # register generators just for rango
  load File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), "..", "simple-templater.scope")
end
templater.run(ARGV.shift) # run generator from ARGV, for example "project"

- stubs/#{generator_name}/setup.rb
- stubs/#{generator_name}/postprocess.rb
- stubs/#{generator_name}/content

Every file in stubs/#{generator_name}/content will be proceed:

- Files which doesn’t require ERB processing are simply copy from stubs/#{generator_name}/content/file.txt to #{project_name}/file.txt
- Files with .rbt extension and ERB tags inside will be proceed by Erubis and the result without .rbt extension will be written to stubs/#{generator_name}/content/app/models/post.rb to #{project_name}/app/models/post.rb.
- If you want to generate file with rbt extension, just put append another .rbt: file.txt.rbt.rbt => #{project_name}/file.txt.rbt. The template will be proceed by Erubis. If you want to get <%= %> on the output, just use <%%= %>.

Each item in ARGV starting with -- is processed by a hook. Hooks can be distributed

# default arguments for hook
hook do |generator, context|
  context.reverse_merge!(git_repository: true)
end

- First argument will typically be name of the generator (unless you provide just one generator and the name is hardcoded)
- --orm to {orm: true}
- --no-orm to {orm: false}
- --orm=datamapper to {orm: "datamapper"}
- --models=post,comment to {models: ["post", "comment"]}
- options = ARGV.parse!
- For testing you may use the parse! method after YourArray.extend(ArgvParsingMixin)

- Do you want to
- --github or --no-github

your-gen project --models=post,comment --controller=posts --orm=datamapper

- the script don’t have to be Ruby, but it will be easier for you since SimpleTemplater provides some basic ARGV parsing for you
- the script have to be executable

- initialize Git repository
- create Git repository on GitHub and push

Each user can create its own generators and put them to ~/.#{project_name}/stubs/#{generator_name}. For example project generators for Rango should be placed to ~/.rango/stubs/project

You often may want to

In Rango:

SimpleTemplater::Discovery.discover!(:rango)

SimpleTemplater.register(:rango) # register relative path to stubs/*

or

SimpleTemplater.register(:rango) do
  # do some initialization
end

- rewrite some default files
- hooks

- Source Code
- RunCodeRun
- API Documentation