Generate Boilerplates with Bash

Posted
  •  
294 words

I often find myseld creating the same files over and over again. So, in the spirit of automation, I created a boilerplate generator in bash. No need for the old googling and ctrl-c + ctrl-c anymore. You can find the project at github.

Installation

Get the project from github and to execute the script from any directory, you'll want to do 2 things:

  • Set the scripts directory path to $PATH.
  • Create a symlink to avoid writing bash extension .sh.

Add Path

I'll assume that you downloaded the project and placed it in your home folder under bin/boilerplate-generator. In that case, you'll need to add:

export PATH="$HOME/bin/boilerplate-generator:$PATH"

to your .bashrc file. It's usually located in your home folder.

Create a symlink to bp.sh by running the following command:

$ ln -s ~/bin/boilerplate-generator/bp.sh ~/bin/boilerplate-generator/bp

Usage

Bob boilerplate generator.

Usage:
  bp [options] [arguments]
  bp -h | --help

Options:
  -h --help         Print this help.
  -v --version      Print script version.

  -l, --list                       List all boilerplates.
  -b [file], --boilerplate [file]  Generate boilerplate file.
  -p [file], --preview [file]      Preview boilerplate.
  -d [path], --dest [path]         Optional new file destination.

Examples:
  bp -b index.html
  bp -b index.html -d /src/index-1.html

Future

I consider the script feature complete. However, I might add some additional features in the future, such as:

  • Directory generation.
  • Variable substitution.
  • Option -b, --boilerplate should be able to take multiple arguments.

Inspiration

The structure of the bash script is heavily inspired by alphabetum github repo bash-boilerplate.

dark/light theme