petridish

A command-line utility that creates project structure.

If you have heard of the cookiecutter project, petridish is a rust implementation of it.

Features

Feature	Description
Cross platform	Windows, Linux, MacOS
More flexible configuration	petridish use toml file to define the template variables
More humanized prompt	support different kinds of prompt (input, select, multi select, confirm)
Powerful template engine	we use tera as our template engine, which is based on Jinja2/Django
One binary	one binary run everywhere
Manage cached templates	If you download a remote template, it will be cached, so later you can just use its name without download it again. You can also list or remove these cached templates

Usage

Like cookiecutter, you should provide directory structure like this:

Let's have a look at the petridish.toml file:

[petridish]
project_prompt = "project name?"
project_var_name = "project_name"
short_description = "This is an awesome template"

[[prompts]]
name = "name"
prompt = "what's your name"
type = "string"

[[prompts]]
name = "age"
choices = [10, 20, 30]
default = 20
type = "number"

[[prompts]]
name = "hobby"
choices = ["running", "swimming"]
multi = true
type = "string"

[[prompts]]
name = "is_geek"
type = "bool"
default = true

Petridish config

Field	Description	optional
project_prompt	the prompt message for project_var_name, default is project name?	✅
project_var_name	the project var name, default is project_name	✅
short_description	the short description of the template, will show in sub cmd list	✅
long_description	the long description of the template, will show before first prompt (support Markdown highlight)	✅

Prompt config

Prompt kind	Field	Description	optional
string input	name	template var name
	prompt	prompt message	✅
	default	default "", support template render	✅
	regex	regex pattern, the prompt value must match the pattern	✅
	type	must be string
number input	name	template var name
	prompt	prompt message	✅
	default	default 0	✅
	min	the min value	✅
	max	the max value	✅
	type	must be number
select	name	template var name
	prompt	prompt message	✅
	choices	choice items
	default	default value	✅
	type	string or number
multi select	name	template var name
	prompt	prompt message	✅
	choices	choice items
	default	default values	✅
	multi	must be true
	emptyable	whether value can be empty, default false	✅
	type	string or number
confirm	name	template var name
	prompt	prompt message	✅
	default	default value (default false)	✅
	type	must be bool

Remote git abbreviations

petridish knows abbreviations for Github(gh) and GitLab(gl) projects

The format should be like <abbreviation>[+<protocol>]:<namespace>/<project>

protocol can be: https, http, ssh, (default is https)

$ petridish new gh+https:petridish-dev/example
$ petridish new example # later you can just use its name

If the remote http(s) project is private, petridish will prompt to ask username and password for authorization.

Demo

Template

A Tera template is just a text file where variables and expressions get replaced with values when it is rendered. The syntax is based on Jinja2 and Django templates.

There are 3 kinds of delimiters and those cannot be changed:

• {{ and }} for expressions
• {% and %} for statements
• {# and #} for comments

More syntax details can be found in tera.