Generate a file or code snippet from any user-defined template.

generate-snippet

Quickstart

Install

Install generate and generate-snippet:

$ npm install --global generate generate-snippet

Generate a snippet

Initiate a prompt to generate any arbitrary snippet from the ~/templates directory (in user home on your system):

$ gen snippet

Data

Any .json files in ~/templates/data will be automatically loaded onto the context.

Data conventions

The basename of each .json file will be used as the root property for the object contained in the JSON file. For example, if button.json has the following contents:

{
  "text": "Click me!"
}

It will be loaded onto the context as:

{
  button: {
    text: 'Click me!'
  }
}

data.json

If data.json is used, its contents will be loaded onto the "root" of the context. For example:

{
  "text": "Click me!"
}

Will be loaded onto the context as:

{
  text: 'Click me!'
}

What is "Generate"?

Generate is a command line tool and developer framework for scaffolding out new GitHub projects using generators and tasks.

Answers to prompts and the user's environment can be used to determine the templates, directories, files and contents to build. Support for gulp, base and assemble plugins, and much more.

For more information:

• Visit the generate project
• Visit the generate documentation
• Find generators on npm (help us author generators)

Getting started

Install

Installing the CLI

To run the snippet generator from the command line, you'll need to install Generate globally first. You can do that now with the following command:

$ npm install --global generate

This adds the gen command to your system path, allowing it to be run from any directory.

Install generate-snippet

Install this module with the following command:

$ npm install --global generate-snippet

Usage

Run this generator's default task with the following command:

$ gen snippet

What you should see in the terminal

If completed successfully, you should see both starting and finished events in the terminal, like the following:

[00:44:21] starting ...
...
[00:44:22] finished ✔

If you do not see one or both of those events, please let us know about it.

Help

To see a general help menu and available commands for Generate's CLI, run:

$ gen help

Tasks

All available tasks.

snippet

Prompts you to choose a snippet from ~/snippets/templates to generate to the current working directory or specified --dest. You can optionally store default data to use for rendering templates in ~/snippets/data, where the name of each .json file matches the name of a snippet. General data can be stored in ~/snippets/data/data.json.

Example

$ gen snippet

Visit Generate's documentation for tasks.

Next steps

Running unit tests

It's never too early to begin running unit tests. When you're ready to get started, the following command will ensure the project's dependencies are installed then run all of the unit tests:

$ npm install && test

Publishing your generator

If you're tests are passing and you're ready to publish your generator to npm, you can do that now with the following command:

Are you sure you're ready?!

Let's go!

$ npm publish

About

Related projects

• generate-gitignore: Generate a .gitignore file from the command line when Generate's CLI is installed globally, or… more | homepage
• generate-license: Generate a license file for a GitHub project. | homepage
• generate-project: Scaffold out complete code projects from the command line, or use this generator as a… more | homepage

Community

Are you using Generate in your project? Have you published a generator and want to share your project with the world?

Here are some suggestions!

• If you get like Generate and want to tweet about it, please feel free to mention @generatejs or use the #generatejs hashtag
• Show your love by starring Generate and generate-snippet
• Get implementation help on StackOverflow (please use the generatejs tag in questions)
• Gitter Discuss Generate with us on Gitter
• If you publish an generator, thank you! To make your project as discoverable as possible, please add the keyword generategenerator to package.json.

Contributing

Pull requests and stars are always welcome. For bugs and feature requests, please create an issue.

Running tests

Install dev dependencies:

$ npm install -d && npm test

Author

Jon Schlinkert

• github/jonschlinkert
• twitter/jonschlinkert

License

Copyright © 2016, Jon Schlinkert. Released under the MIT license.

This file was generated by verb-generate-readme, v0.1.30, on August 19, 2016.