still in development, please do not use

#Boilerplatr

A dead simple way to manage, publish, and share your boilerplate files.

About

Everyone's coming out with their own frameworks, but there isn't a standard way of finding and using them. Once a developer has created their framework, they shouldn't be hassled with creating a scaffold generator for it. By the time they've finished that, they're already onto a new framework. Boilerplatr is built on top of NPM to allow you to get up and running with quickly, with as little as possible overhead.

Note: the term boilers below will refer to the template files a user creates to work with boilerplatr

Requirements

You must have nodejs installed, tested for v.0.6.0 or higher. Here is a guide for how to install it on your system.

Installation

Note: this tool is meant to be installed as a global package, so make sure to use the -g flag to make sure it's placed in your system's bin directory.

clone the repo

$ git clone https://github.com/nick-jonas/boilerplatr.git
$ npm install -g

or directly from npm

$ npm install -g boilerplatr

Create a Boiler

Run this command at the root of your project

$ boiler init

This will walk you through the creation of package.json.

Now you can get started with creating your boilerplate files. Place all your template files relative to the root, where package.json is. The dOT templating system is used throughout all your files, including your config in package.json.

When you're done, you can use this command to use your boiler. (Note: this is referencing the name used in package.json)

$ boiler name-of-your-boiler

Run this command to publish your project for other people to use.

$ boiler publish

package.json

A package.json file is required to be in the root of your file, which allows your boiler to work with NPM. The command boiler init will walk you through the file setup for this.

Bare minimum requirement:

{
    "name":      "my-boiler",
    "version":   "0.0.1",
    "boiler": {}
}

Here is a more advanced setup:

{
    "name":      "my-boiler",
    "version":   "0.0.1",
    "boiler": {
        "output_file_dir": "./",
        "file_filter":      ["!.DS_Store", "!thumbs.db"],
        "dir_filter":       ["!.svn", "!.git", "!.sass-cache"],
        "file_mapping":     [
            {
                "input":    "/js/example.jquery.js",
                "output":   "/js/<%= boiler.pluginName %>.jquery.js"
            }
        ],
        "var_mapping":      {
            "pluginName":{
                "description": "Enter the name of your jQuery plugin",
                "type": "string",
                "default": "example"
            }
        }
    }
}

###Use Case

With the above package.json setup, here is an example command-line scenario:

$ boiler my-boiler
Boilerplatr: Enter the name of your jQuery plugin (example):
$ myWonderfulPlugin

The user is required to type in a String value, in this case, "myWonderfulPlugin", and this value is used everywhere that <%= boiler.pluginName %> is found in the template files. (i.e. /js/example.jquery.js will also be outputted to /js/myWonderfulPlugin.jquery.js)

###Config

• name : your boiler name
• version : your boiler version number
• boiler
  • output_file_dir : outputs the template to the current directory
  • file_filter : outputs the template to the current directory
  • dir_filter : outputs the template to the current directory
  • file_mapping : an array of file mapping objects
    • Each file_mapping object has an input and output property. The input is the path to the original file, and the output is the filename after the templating is done. You can also use <%= boiler.myFileName %> templating here to make this more dynamic.
  • var_mapping : a collection of var_mapping objects
    • name of the variable
      • description : the prompt that the user will see
      • type : type restrictions on user input
      • default : offer a default value to the user