Churn

Generate files and folders from a template. Let it do the boring stuff for you.

!! WARNING !!

This is barely a pre-alpha. It's literally something that I threw together in half an hour. Do feel free to contribute!

Currently unimplemented features:

• Tests
• Parallel file/folder processing (currently everything is synchronous)
• Symlink handling
• Many other things

Why

Because I'm tired of having to copypaste trivial code

How

First, create a file named churnfile.js (or you can name it something different and pass it with the --config option) like this:

const path = require('path')

module.exports = {
	variables: {
		TEST_VARIABLE: 'hello',
		CREATION_DATE: () => new Date(),
		NAME_VARIATION: name => `${name}-san`
	},
	templates: [path.join(__dirname, 'templates')],
	output: path.join(__dirname, 'out')
}

You can specify your variables and you must specify at least one template path within the templates array. The output option allows you to specify where you want the output to be saved, but you can also set it when calling churn by using the --output option.

The complete command call is this:

./src/cli.js --config <config_name> --template <template_name> --output <wherever> lowercase-name-of-the-thing

A simple example that uses the default churnfile.js is the following

./src/cli.js --template component progress-bar

You can omit the --template option. In that case, churn will look for a template with the same name of what you are trying to create. This is not recommended.

You can add it to you project by running npm install churnjs ( churn was already taken :( ), adding a churnfile and some templates and then alias some npm scripts in your package.json:

{
	//...
	scripts: {
		"make:component": "churnjs --template component --output src/components"
	},
	//...
}

You can then call npm run make:component MyComponent and be happy!

Templates

Templates are directories with files in them. They can also have other directories with other files, as deep as your heart desires. The content of a file will be replicated, with variables replaced. Variables can also be used in a file or a directory's name, check out the example templates within the example_templates directory.

Variables are enclosed between % symbols, and these are defined by default:

NAME: toLower(name),									// hellofriend
UPPER_NAME: toUpper(name),								// HELLOFRIEND
NAME_PLURAL: toLower(pluralize.plural(name)),			// hellofriends
UPPER_NAME_PLURAL: toUpper(pluralize.plural(name)),		// HELLOFRIENDS
CAMEL_NAME: camel(name),								// HelloFriend
CAMEL_NAME_PLURAL: camel(pluralize.plural(name))		// HelloFriends

where name is the one you pass from the command line. All the above variables can be overridden within the churnfile, and new ones can be defined within its variables key. You can use either immediate values or functions to define them, with the function variant always receiving the name as its first and only argument.

The .tpl extension is optional, it will be stripped away if present. Use it if your editor screams at you for using %VARIABLES%, knowing that you'll probably lose syntax highlighting.

Contribute

Yes, please!

Acknowledgements

React Native Create Library has a way of handling the command definition that I liked, so I used that. Thank you @frostney!

License

MIT