templeton

🏗️ Templeton

Templeton is a lightweight project scaffolding tool that generates directory structures and files from YAML-based Go templates. It supports both command-line data injection and a smart interactive mode that prompts for missing variables.

✨ Features

• YAML-based Specifications: Define your project structure in a single, readable YAML file.
• Dynamic Templating: Use Go's text/template syntax in both file paths and contents.
• Smart Variable Extraction: Automatically detects required keys from your templates.
• Interactive Scaffolding: Prompts you for missing values if they aren't provided via flags.
• Global Templates: Store common templates in ~/.templeton/ for easy access.
• Additional Assets: If a directory exists next to a template with the same name, its contents are automatically copied to the project root.

🚀 Quick Start

1. Define a Template

Create a file named jumping.yaml:

- path: "src/{{.Hurdle}}Prose.txt"
  contents: |
    The quick brown fox jumped over {{.Hurdle}}
- path: "LICENSE"
  contents: |
    This is a license for the {{.Hurdle}} project.

2. Run Templeton

Interactive Mode (Recommended)

Simply specify the template. Templeton will find Hurdle and ask you for its value:

templeton --template jumping.yaml --root my-project
# ✔ Value for Hurdle: fence

Command Line Mode

Provide the data directly via the --data flag:

templeton --template jumping.yaml --root my-project --data Hurdle=Fence

🏗️ Advanced Template Format

Templeton supports a more advanced YAML format that allows you to define variable metadata, input validation, and template-wide settings.

Enhanced template.yaml

variables:
  ProjectName:
    description: "The name of the new project"
    default: "my-cool-app"
    validate: "required"
  Rent:
    description: "Monthly rent amount"
    validate: "required,number"
  StartDate:
    description: "Lease start date (YYYY-MM-DD)"
    validate: "required,date"

templates:
  - path: "src/{{.ProjectName}}/config.txt"
    contents: |
      Project: {{.ProjectName}}
      Monthly Rent: {{.Rent | currency}}
      Starts on: {{.StartDate | date "January 2, 2006"}}

🛠️ Formatters

You can use formatters in your templates using the pipe (|) syntax:

📋 Variable Types

✅ Validators

Validators can be added to the validate field in the variables section (comma-separated):

📂 Global Templates

You can store templates in ~/.templeton/ and access them using the --project flag:

# Looks for ~/.templeton/go-api.yaml
templeton --project go-api --root my-new-api

🛠️ Installation & Building

Using go install

go install github.com/uwedeportivo/templeton@latest

Using Bazel

bazel build //:templeton
./bazel-bin/templeton_/templeton --help

Using Go

go build -o templeton .
./templeton --help

[!TIP] Both path names and file contents support full Go template functionality, including functions like ToUpper, ToLower, and ToTitle.