Rock generates file structures or project skeletons based off of predefined templates.
Do you constantly finding yourself writing a lot of new libraries for Node.js and having to create the package.json
, README
, LICENSE
, lib/
, test/
files over and over again? Well, I did. I was getting annoyed of having to create the same file structure over and over again.
I stumbled upon a few solutions, but they all seem to do more than just generate a file structure from a template. That's all I wanted. Oh, and I wanted it to be programmatic too. So, if I wanted to build a blogging engine or another Rails clone in JS, I could leverage rock
to generate the empty templates.
As it stands now, rock
is written in Node.js. But the actual templates themselves could be for any language.
You will need Node.js and npm
(Node.js Package Manager). This is bundled with Node.js. If you don't have npm
, mozy on over to the Node.js download page. There are prebuilt binaries and installers for most platforms including Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.
After you have installed Node.js and npm, you can install rock by running the following command:
npm install -g rock
Don't forget the -g flag. This will ensure that the rock
command is available system wide.
rock [path] -r [rock]
example:
rock mylib -r node-lib
or
rock /tmp/mylib -r node-lib
--version Print version and exit.
-r ROCK, --rock ROCK The rock path or Github repo.
-c, --config The config file. Defaults to ~/.rock/rock.conf.json
-f, --file If the rock is a single file. Supports http as well. [false]
--topen Opening template value. Defaults to {{ [{{]
--tclose Closing template value. Defaults to }} [}}]
Want to create a project from a rock hosted somewhere else? No problem:
rock myapp -r git@github.com:johndoe/myrepo.git
or use Github shorthand:
rock myapp -r johndoe/myrepo
It's stupidly simple to make your own rocks. Create a Git repository on Github or an empty directory on your filesystem. Start making template files.
Example (myproject.js):
/*
Author: {{author}} <{{email}}>
File: {{-file}}
Created: {{-date}}
*/
function main() {
}
Now, when you run:
rock myproj -r /path/to/my/rock/repo
Rock will prompt:
author: [YOU_TYPE_YOUR_NAME_HERE]
email: [YOU_TYPE_YOUR_EMAIL_HERE]
Rock, then will create the file structure of your new project with the values of your template tokens replaced with what you typed. Rock already understands -file
, -date
, and a few others.
In your rock repo, add a file .rock/rock.json
. Add the following:
{
"ignoreDirs": ["./dirToIgnore"]
}
Why would you do this? Let's say that you're calling rock programmatically and you don't want rock to prompt you for any tokens because you are going to use Mustache/Hogan/Handlebars in your own code.
If you don't want to use the default {{
and }}
and want to use something else, you can configure this behavior for your Rock in .rock/rock.json
:
{
"tokens": {
"open": "#{",
"close": "}"
}
}
You may want to do this if you generate files that actually use Mustache templates.
Rock doesn't need to be used with just whole repos. It can be used with individual files as well.
Example:
Hi, @@author@@ is going to build:
@@project-name@@.
command:
rock /tmp/outputfile.txt -f --topen '@@' --tclose '@@' -r http://localhost/data.txt
prompts:
author: JP
project-name: Rock
output:
/tmp/outputfile.txt:
Hi, JP is going to build:
Rock
This file defaults to ~/.rock/rock.conf.json
. You can set default values (prompt or skip).
{
"templateValues": {
"author": "JP Richardson"
},
"defaultValues": {
"email": "jprichardson@gmail.com"
}
}
So, if you were to run:
rock myapp -r rocktemplates/node-bin
it would not prompt you for author
and it would prompt you for email
but with a default of jprichardson@gmail.com
.
See more rocks at: https://github.com/rocktemplates or browse 3rd party Rocks here: https://github.com/rocktemplates/rock/wiki/rocks
(The MIT License)
Copyright (c) 2012-2013, JP Richardson