Simple Scaffold

GitHub | Documentation | NPM | casraf.dev

Looking to streamline your workflow and get your projects up and running quickly? Look no further than Simple Scaffold - the easy-to-use NPM package that simplifies the process of organizing and copying your commonly-created files.

With its agnostic and un-opinionated approach, Simple Scaffold can handle anything from a few simple files to an entire app boilerplate setup. Plus, with the power of Handlebars.js syntax, you can easily replace custom data and personalize your files to fit your exact needs. But that's not all - you can also use it to loop through data, use conditions, and write custom functions using helpers.

Don't waste any more time manually copying and pasting files - let Simple Scaffold do the heavy lifting for you and start building your projects faster and more efficiently today!

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Quick Start

Local Templates

The fastest way to get started is to use npx to immediately start a scaffold process.

Prepare any templates you want to use - for example, in the directory templates/component; and use that in the CLI args. Here is a simple example file:

Simple Scaffold will maintain any file and directory structure you try to generate.

templates/component/{{ pascalName name }}.tsx

// Created: {{ now 'yyyy-MM-dd' }}
import React from 'react'

export default {{pascalCase name}}: React.FC = (props) => {
  return (
    <div className="{{camelCase name}}">{{pascalCase name}} Component</div>
  )
}
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To generate the template output, run:

# generate single component
$ npx simple-scaffold@latest \
  -t templates/component -o src/components PageWrapper
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This will immediately create the following file: src/components/PageWrapper.tsx

// Created: 2077-01-01
import React from 'react'

export default PageWrapper: React.FC = (props) => {
  return (
    <div className="pageWrapper">PageWrapper Component</div>
  )
}
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Configuration Files

You can also use a config file to more easily maintain all your scaffold definitions.

scaffold.config.js

module.exports = {
  // use "default" to avoid needing to specify key
  // in this case the key is "component"
  component: {
    templates: ["templates/component"],
    output: "src/components",
    data: {
      // ...
    },
  },
}
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Then call your scaffold like this:

$ npx simple-scaffold@latest -c scaffold.config.js PageWrapper
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This will allow you to avoid needing to remember which configs are needed or to store them in a 1-liner in packqge.json which can get pretty long and messy, which is harder to maintain.

Also, this allows you to define more complex scaffolds with logic without having to use the Node.js API directly. (Of course you always have the option to still do so if you wish)

See more at the CLI documentation and Configuration Files.

Remote Configurations

Another quick way to start is to re-use someone else's (or your own) work using a template repository.

A remote config can be loaded in one of these ways:

• If it's on GitHub, you can use -gh user/repository_name
• If it's on another git server (such as GitLab), you can use -c https://example.com/user/repository_name.git

Configurations can hold multiple scaffold groups. Each group can be accessed using its key by supplying the --key or -k argument, or by appending a hash and then the key name, like so: -gh user/repository_name#key_name - this also works for the -c flag.

Here is an example for loading the example component templates in this very repository:

$ npx simple-scaffold@latest \
  -gh chenasraf/simple-scaffold#scaffold.config.js:component \
  PageWrapper

# equivalent to:
$ npx simple-scaffold@latest \
  -c https://github.com/chenasraf/simple-scaffold.git#scaffold.config.js:component \
  PageWrapper
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When template name (:component) is omitted, default is used.

See more at the CLI documentation and Configuration Files.

Documentation

See full documentation here.

• Command Line Interface (CLI) usage
• Node.js usage
• Templates
• Configuration Files
• Migrating v0.x to v1.x

Contributing

I am developing this package on my free time, so any support, whether code, issues, or just stars is very helpful to sustaining its life. If you are feeling incredibly generous and would like to donate just a small amount to help sustain this project, I would be very very thankful!

I welcome any issues or pull requests on GitHub. If you find a bug, or would like a new feature, don't hesitate to open an appropriate issue and I will do my best to reply promptly.

If you are a developer and want to contribute code, here are some starting tips:

1. Fork this repository
2. Run yarn install
3. Run yarn dev to start file watch mode
4. Make any changes you would like
5. Create tests for your changes
6. Update the relevant documentation (readme, code comments, type comments)
7. Create a PR on upstream

Some tips on getting around the code:

• Use yarn dev for development - it runs TypeScript compile in watch mode, allowing you to make changes and immediately be able to try them using yarn cmd.

• Use yarn build to build the output once

• Use yarn test to run tests

• Use yarn cmd to use the CLI feature of Simple Scaffold from within the root directory, enabling you to test different behaviors. See yarn cmd -h for more information.

  This requires an updated build, and does not trigger one itself. From here you have several options:

  • Run yarn dev to watch for file changes and build automatically
  • Run yarn build before running this to trigger a one-time build
  • Run yarn build-cmd which triggers a build right before running yarn cmd automatically with the rest of the given arguments.

• Use yarn build-docs to build the documentation once

• Use yarn watch-docs to start docs in watch mode

• To see the documentation, currently you have to serve the directory yourself with a static web server (like node's built in serve, VS code's "Go Live" mode, etc)