Stencils

DISCLAIMER: This is an alpha project and as such has not settled on a stable API.

A simple CLI tool for managing and generating templates for projects; a simplified yeoman.

Getting Started

Installation

  npm i -g stencils

Setup

Stencil Projects are folders that have a .stlrc file and .stencils directory.

  stl init

When determining if a project is a stencils project stencils looks at the current project and checks for the .stlrc file. If it doesn't find one in the current directory stencils will crawl the file system up until it reaches the users home directory.

NOTE: do not initialize stencils as root or outside of the user directory

Adding Templates

Stencils uses a structured filesystem format to store the templates in the project. New Templates must be added with:

  stl add templateName

'Add' will prompt for what the filetype is for the template

Listing Templates

  stl ls

List files with extensions

  stl ls -a

Editing templates

For convenience you can open the files with:

 stl open templateName

Or specify an application with:

  stl open -a WebStorm templateName

Using Templates

  stl use templateName

'Use' will scan the template for all the template variables and prompt for the data.

Template Engine settings

Stencils supports Ejs and Mustache out-of-the-box, but defaults to ejs.
Each of these template engines can be configured in the .stlrc file.

For example with ejs:

  {
    "version": "0.8.5-alpha",
    "engine": "ejs",
    "ejs": {
      "delimiter": "@" 
    }
  }

or with mustache

  {
    "version": "0.8.5-alpha",
    "engine": "mustache",
    "mustache": {
      "tags": ["<%", "%>"] 
    }
  }

the default engine can be overridden at run-time by passing the --engine flag with the name of the engine.

 stl add service --engine mustache
 stl use service --engine mustache

The order of operations for how stencils decides which engine to use is from left to right, where left has the most authority cli -> config -> default

It's important to note that files added with different engines are considered different templates and will be displayed
with their appropriate engine when running stl ls

Roadmap

• 0.5.0-alpha - support for meta files and template reading for data population
• 0.7.0-alpha - add command class and extend each command from class (will be used to hold some option)
• 0.8.0-alpha - change default engine to ejs
• 0.8.5-alpha - support ejs/mustache options (including custom delimiter/tags)
• 0.9.0-alpha - support user level rc file, support rc file find up (similar to .npmrc behavior)
• 0.20.0-alpha - support for directory type templates
• 0.30.0-alpha - support for groups (defaults to local)
• 0.40.0-alpha - unit and integration tests
• 0.45.0-alpha - get jsdoc working
• 0.50.0-alpha - add bash auto completion support
• 0.54.0-alpha - update help text and cli output text
• 0.56.0-alpha - simplify README
• 0.58.0-beta - beta release
• 1.0.0-rc1 - release candidate
• 1.0.0 - public release

Feature Ideas

• remote templates
• core templates (pre-established templates) using the groups feature TBD in 0.30.0-alpha
• symlink templates

Want to help or have an idea?

Create feature request ticket or Email