Generate

Introduction

The Generate Extension includes the Generate controller, and provides a mechanism for generating common content from template directories. An example use case would be the ability for application developers to easily generate new plugins for their application… similar in other applications such as Chef Software’s chef generate cookbook type utilities.

The Cement Developer Tools use this extension to generate projects, plugins, extensions, scripts, etc for developers building their applications on the framework.

Documentation References:

• Templating

API References:

• Cement Generate Extension

Requirements

• pyYaml

• A valid template handler must be defined at the application level via App.Meta.template_handler such as jinja2, mustache, etc.

Cement 3.0.8+:

pip install cement[generate]

Applications using Cement <3.0.8 should continue to include pyYaml in their dependencies.

Configuration

Application Configuration Settings

This extension honors the following settings under the primary namespace (ex: [myapp]) of the application configuration:

Setting	Description
template_dir	Directory path of a local template directory.

Application Meta Options

This extension honors the following App.Meta options:

Option	Description
template_handler	A template handler to use as the backend for templating
template_dirs	A list of data directories to look for templates
template_module	A python module to look for templates

Usage

Examples

Example: Using Generate Extension

from cement import App

class MyApp(App):
    class Meta:
        label = 'myapp'
        extensions = ['generate', 'jinja2']
        template_handler = 'jinja2'


with MyApp() as app:
    app.run()

cli

$ python myapp.py --help
usage: myapp [-h] [--debug] [--quiet] {generate} ...

optional arguments:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit
  --debug     toggle debug output
  --quiet     suppress all output

sub-commands:
  {generate}
    generate  generate controller


$ python myapp.py generate --help
usage: myapp generate [-h] {plugin} ...

optional arguments:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit

sub-commands:
  {plugin}
    plugin      generate plugin from template

Generate Templates

The Generate Extension looks for a generate sub-directory in all defined template directory paths defined at the application level. If it finds a generate directory it treats all items within that directory as a generate template.

A Generate Template requires a single configuration YAML file called .generate.yml that looks something like:

---
ignore:
    - "^(.*)ignore-this(.*)$"
    - "^(.*)ignore-that(.*)$"

exclude:
    - "^(.*)exclude-this(.*)$"
    - "^(.*)exclude-that(.*)$"

variables:
    - name: 'my_variable_name'
      prompt: 'The Prompt Displayed to The User'

Generate Template Configuration

The following configurations are supported in a generate template’s config:

ignore	A list of regular expressions to match files that you want to completely ignore
exclude	A list of regular expressions to match files that you want to copy only (not rendered as template)
variables	A list of variable definitions that support the following sub-keys: