Preparing template files

Put your template files anywhere, and fill them with tokens for replacement.

Each template (not file) in the config array is parsed individually, and copied to the output directory. If a single template path contains multiple files (e.g. if you use a folder path or a glob pattern), the first directory up the tree of that template will become the base inside the defined output path for that template, while copying files recursively and maintaining their relative structure.

Examples:

In the following examples, the config name is AppName, and the config output is src.

Input template	Files in template	Output path(s)
./templates/{{ name }}.txt	./templates/{{ name }}.txt	src/AppName.txt
./templates/directory	outer/{{name}}.txt, outer2/inner/{{name}}.txt	src/outer/AppName.txt, src/outer2/inner/AppName.txt
./templates/others/**/*.txt	outer/{{name}}.jpg, outer2/inner/{{name}}.txt	src/outer2/inner/AppName.txt

Variable/token replacement

Scaffolding will replace {{ varName }} in both the file name and its contents and put the transformed files in the output directory.

The data available for the template parser is the data you pass to the data config option (or --data argument in CLI).

For example, using the following command:

npx simple-scaffold@latest \
  --templates templates/components/{{name}}.jsx \
  --output src/components \
  --create-sub-folder true \
  MyComponent

Will output a file with the path:

<working_dir>/src/components/MyComponent.jsx

The contents of the file will be transformed in a similar fashion.

Your data will be pre-populated with the following:

• {{name}}: raw name of the component as you entered it

Simple-Scaffold uses Handlebars.js for outputting the file contents. Any data you add in the config will be available for use with their names wrapped in {{ and }}. Other Handlebars built-ins such as each, if and with are also supported, see Handlebars.js Language Features for more information.

Helpers

Built-in Helpers

Simple-Scaffold provides some built-in text transformation filters usable by Handlebars.

For example, you may use {{ snakeCase name }} inside a template file or filename, and it will replace My Name with my_name when producing the final value.

Capitalization Helpers

Helper name	Example code	Example output
[None]	{{ name }}	my name
camelCase	{{ camelCase name }}	myName
snakeCase	{{ snakeCase name }}	my_name
startCase	{{ startCase name }}	My Name
kebabCase	{{ kebabCase name }}	my-name
hyphenCase	{{ hyphenCase name }}	my-name
pascalCase	{{ pascalCase name }}	MyName
upperCase	{{ upperCase name }}	MY NAME
lowerCase	{{ lowerCase name }}	my name

Date helpers

Helper name	Description	Example code	Example output
now	Current date with format	{{ now "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm" }}	2042-01-01 15:00
now (with offset)	Current date with format, and with offset	{{ now "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm" -1 "hours" }}	2042-01-01 14:00
date	Custom date with format	{{ date "2042-01-01T15:00:00Z" "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm" }}	2042-01-01 15:00
date (with offset)	Custom date with format, and with offset	{{ date "2042-01-01T15:00:00Z" "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm" -1 "days" }}	2041-31-12 15:00
date (with date from --data)	Custom date with format, with data from the data config option	{{ date myCustomDate "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm" }}	2042-01-01 12:00

Further details:

• We use date-fns for parsing/manipulating the dates. If you want more information on the date tokens to use, refer to their format documentation.

• The date helper format takes the following arguments:

  (
    date: string,
    format: string,
    offsetAmount?: number,
    offsetType?: "years" | "months" | "weeks" | "days" | "hours" | "minutes" | "seconds"
  )

• The now helper (for current time) takes the same arguments, minus the first one (date) as it is implicitly the current date:

  (
    format: string,
    offsetAmount?: number,
    offsetType?: "years" | "months" | "weeks" | "days" | "hours" | "minutes" | "seconds"
  )

Custom Helpers

You may also add your own custom helpers using the helpers options when using the JS API (rather than the CLI). The helpers option takes an object whose keys are helper names, and values are the transformation functions. For example, upperCase is implemented like so:

config.helpers = {
  upperCase: (text) => text.toUpperCase(),
}

All of the above helpers (built in and custom) will also be available to you when using subdirHelper (--sub-dir-helper/-H) as a possible value.

To see more information on how helpers work and more features, see Handlebars.js docs.