I was completely stuck for awhile. copier was not replacing my template
variables. I found out that adding all these
_endops
fixed it. Now
It will support all of these types of variable wrappers
# copier.yml
_templates_suffix: .jinja
_envops:
block_end_string: "%}"
block_start_string: "{%"
comment_end_string: "#}"
comment_start_string: "{#"
keep_trailing_newline: true
variable_end_string: "}}"
variable_start_string: "{{"
!RTFM: Later I read the docs and realized that copier defaults to using
[[and]]for its templates unlike other tools like cookiecutter.
I've been looking for a templating tool for awhile that works well with
single files. My go to templating tool
cookiecutter
does not work for
single files, it needs to put files into a directory underneath of it.
template variables
By default copier uses double square brackets for its variables. variables in files, directory_names, or file_names will be substituted for their value once you render them.
# hello-py/hello.py.tmpl
print('hello-[[name]]')
note! by default copier will not inject variables into your [[template-strings]] unless you use a .tmpl suffix.
Before running copier we need to tell copier what variables to ask for, we do this with a copier.yml file.
# copier.yml
name:
default: my_name
type: str
help: What is your name
installing copier
I prefer to install cli tools that I need globally with pipx, this always gives me access to the tool without worrying about dependency conflicts, bloating my system site-packages, or managing a separate virtual environment for it myself.
pipx install copier
running copier
When running
copier copy
we pass in the directory of the template, and
the directory that we want to render the template into.
copier copy hello-py .
note! the directory '.' is often referred to in cli programs to represent the current working directory that we are calling the command from.
results
The resulting files will have your variables injected into them if you have setup your template and copier.yml up correctly.
print('hello-you')
The copier answers file is a key component to making your templates re-runnable. Let's look at the example for my setup.py.
❯ tree ~/.copier-templates/setup.py
/home/walkers/.copier-templates/setup.py
├── [[ _copier_conf.answers_file ]].tmpl
├── copier.yml
├── setup.cfg
└── setup.py.tmpl
0 directories, 4 files
Inside of my
[[ _copier_conf.answers_file ]].tmpl
file is this, a
message not to muck around with it, and the ansers in yaml form. The
first line is just a helper for the blog post.
# ~/.copier-templates/setup.py/\[\[\ _copier_conf.answers_file\ \]\].tmpl
# Changes here will be overwritten by Copier; NEVER EDIT MANUALLY
[[_copier_answers|to_nice_yaml]]
Inside my copier.yml I have setup my _answers_file to point to a special file. This is because this is not a whole projet template, but one just for a single file.
# copier.yml
# ...
_answers_file: .setup-py-copier-answers.yml
Once I change the _answers_file I was incredibly stuck
Run it
I'm making a library of personal copier templates in my
~/.copier-templates
directory and I am going to run it from there.
copier copy ~/.copier-templates/setup.py
Results
After rendering the template we have the following content in our
.setup.setup-py-copier-answers.yml
file. This will allow us to update
quick if we ever change our template.
# .setup-py-copier-answers.yml
# Changes here will be overwritten by Copier; NEVER EDIT MANUALLY
_src_path: /home/walkers/.copier-templates/setup.py
author_github: waylonwalker
author_name: Waylon Walker
description: awesomeness
framework: null
keywords: null
package_name: my-package
Update it
This is where I was most stuck, primarily becuase
-a <answers_file>
must come exactly after the base command
copier
. This felt a bit odd
to and not where I expected it so it.
copier -a .setup-py-copier-answers.yml update
Stop asking all these damn questions
So the defaults are now changed to our previous results, but it keeps
asking for them. To stop asking we can simply add a
-f
flag.
copier -fa .setup-py-copier-answers.yml update