Cookie Is a Template-Based File Generator for Linux

cookie

Stop repeating yourself! Cookie templates make writing scripts, LaTeX documents, Makefiles, and other one-off files easier than ever!

Usage

Usage: cookie [-d] [-D TARGET_DIR] [-f] [-m MODE] [-v] [-x] -t TEMPLATE TARGET
       cookie -c
       cookie -e TEMPLATE
       cookie -h
       cookie -l [TEMPLATE]
       cookie -r TEMPLATE

Initializes a new file (TARGET) using a predefined template (TEMPLATE).
The target file can be a new script, configuration file, markup file, etc....
After the target file has been initialized, it is opened for editing using the
system's default editor.

Positional Arguments:
    TARGET          The name of the file to initialize.

Optional Arguments:
    -d | --debug
        Enable debug mode.

    -c | --config
        Edit the configuration file.

    -D DIR | --bin-subdir DIR
        Initialize TARGET into DIR, which should be a subdirectory of the
        default bin directory (see the configuration file).

    -e TEMPLATE | --edit TEMPLATE
        Add / edit cookie template.

    -f | --force
        Force TARGET initialization to be relative to the current
        directory. This option essentially overrides the ROOT_DIR
        configuration setting. Enabled by default for non-executable
        targets.

    -h | --help
        View this help message.

    -l [TEMPLATE] | --list [TEMPLATE]
        If TEMPLATE is provided, output template contents to STDOUT.
        Otherwise, list available templates. 

    -m MODE | --mode MODE
        Sets file mode bits. Accepts any form for MODE that is recognized
        by the 'chmod' command.

    -r TEMPLATE | --remove TEMPLATE
        Delete cookie template.

    -t TEMPLATE | --template TEMPLATE
        The name of the template (e.g. mytemplate.sh).

    -x
        Make TARGET executable. Equivalent to '-m +x'.

    -v | --verbose
        Enable verbose output.

Templates

Templates are stored in the directory specified by $COOKIE_DIR which, if not specified in the configuration file (see thesection), defaults to ~/.cookiecutters (the same directory used by cookiecutter to store templates).

See my personal templates for examples on how you can use templates.

Template Variables and Statements

While not as full-featured as the jinja template engine that cookiecutter uses, there are a few special variables and statements available. The syntax for these will be familiar if you have used jinja in the past.

Variable Substitution

cookie also recognizes template variables of the form:

{{ foobar }}

This string will be replaced by the value of the environment variable foobar if it exists. Otherwise, the user will be prompted to provide a value for foobar on the command-line.

To ensure compatibility with files in cookiecutter templates, you may also preface the variable with cookiecutter followed by a period. Hence, the following statement is equivalent to the one discussed above:

{{ cookiecutter.foobar }}

Mark Start Point for Editing (only works when vim is set as the default system editor)

If the following statement is found in the template, vim will start with the cursor on that line and on the column of first curly brace (after removing the statement) and will start in INSERT mode:

{% INSERT %}

The following statement does the same thing but will start vim in NORMAL mode (vim's default behavior):

{% NORMAL %}

Configuration

The configuration file can be found at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/cookie/config . The following options are available:

# The target file will be initialized in a location relative to this directory
# unless you specify the `-f` option. In which case the target file will be
# initialized relative to the current directory.
#
# Defaults to "./" (the current directory).
ROOT_DIR=

# The target file is initialized in $ROOT_DIR/$DEFAULT_TARGET_DIR
# unless the `-D {DIR}` option is used. In which case the target file will
# be initialized to $ROOT_DIR/{DIR}.
DEFAULT_TARGET_DIR=

# If specified, this command is evaluated after (and if) the target file
# has its executable bit set. This can be used to create symlinks to
# the target file (using `stow`, for example).
#
# The $TARGET variable, which contains the full path of the target file,
# will be injected into the environment of this command.
EXEC_HOOK_CMD=

# The directory used to store cookie templates.
# 
# Defaults to "~/.cookiecutters".
COOKIE_DIR=

Using Shell Aliases / Functions

You can of course run cookie directly, but I have not found that to be very convenient. Instead, I have created a variety of shell aliases and functions which serve as custom initialization commands that are specific to a single goal and filetype. Here are a few examples:

alias ainit='cookie -t template.awk -D awk -x'
alias binit='cookie -t minimal.sh -x'
alias Binit='cookie -t full.sh -x'
hw() { ASSIGNMENT_NUMBER="$1" cookie -t hw.tex "${@:2}" HW"$1"/hw"$1".tex; }
alias minit='cookie -t c.make Makefile'
alias mtinit='cookie -t gtest.make Makefile'
alias pyinit='cookie -t template.py -x'
pytinit() { cookie -t pytest.py test_"$1".py; }
alias texinit='cookie -t template.tex'

Examples

Let us now take a look at a few examples of how cookie might be useful.

For reference, my personal cookie templates can be found here and these are the configuration settings that I use:

PARENT_BIN_DIR="/home/bryan/Dropbox/bin"
DEFAULT_BIN_SUBDIR="main"
EXEC_HOOK_CMD=/usr/local/bin/clinks

where /home/bryan/Dropbox/bin is a home for this GitHub repository. (The clinks script wraps a bunch of stow commands which makes creating symlinks to a system bin folder a walk in the park while still keeping my scripts organized the way I like in my filesystem.)

To initialize a minimal bash script named foo into the /home/bryan/Dropbox/main directory (where I keep most of my scripts), I could run the following command:

binit foo

Suppose instead that I wanted to initialize a new productivity script named bar into the /home/bryan/Dropbox/GTD directory. Furthermore, suppose that I know that bar might get complicated (and thus needs to scale well). I could then choose to run

Binit -D GTD bar

to initialize a full featured bash script (bells and whistles included) into the /home/bryan/Dropbox/GTD directory.

Advanced Usage

I wrote a short blog post describing a few of cookie's more advanced features.

Similar Projects

• cookiecutter - A command-line utility that creates projects from cookiecutters (project templates).
• j2cli - Jinja2 Command-Line Tool.

Installation

Installation is as simple as cloning the repository with git clone https://github.com/bbugyi200/cookie , traveling into the project directory ( cd cookie ), and then running sudo make install .

ZSH Completion

The appropriate completion function should be installed automatically. If necessary, however, you can enable ZSH command-line completion manually by copying the _cookie file to a directory listed by your system's $fpath variable (normally the /usr/share/zsh/site-functions directory works).