Creating Generators

SAO provides a generator for creating a new generator:

sao generator sao-sample
# Make sure to replace `sao-sample` with your desired generator name

Folder Structure

The basic folder structure is as follows:

.
├── LICENSE
├── README.md
├── circle.yml
├── package.json
├── saofile.js
├── template
│   ├── LICENSE
│   ├── README.md
│   └── gitignore
├── test
│   └── test.js
└── yarn.lock # Or package-lock.json if you don't have Yarn on your machine

📝 saofile.js:

const superb = require('superb')

module.exports = {
  prompts() {
    return [
      {
        name: 'name',
        message: 'What is the name of the new project',
        default: this.outFolder,
        filter: val => val.toLowerCase()
      },
      {
        name: 'description',
        message: 'How would you descripe the new project',
        default: `my ${superb()} project`
      },
      {
        name: 'username',
        message: 'What is your GitHub username',
        default: this.gitUser.username || this.gitUser.name,
        filter: val => val.toLowerCase(),
        store: true
      },
      {
        name: 'email',
        message: 'What is your email?',
        default: this.gitUser.email,
        store: true
      },
      {
        message: 'The URL of your website',
        default({ username }) {
          return `github.com/${username}`
        },
        store: true
      }
    ]
  },
  actions: [
    {
      type: 'add',
      // Copy and transform all files in `template` folder into output directory
      files: '**'
    },
    {
      type: 'move',
      patterns: {
        gitignore: '.gitignore'
      }
    }
  ],
  async completed() {
    this.gitInit()
    await this.npmInstall()
    this.showProjectTips()
  }
}

prompts: CLI prompts to retrive answers from current user.
actions: A series of actions to manipulate files.
completed: A function that will be invoked when the whole process is finished.

Now you can run the generator to generate a new project:

sao ../sao-sample new-project

Note that if no saofile.js was found in the generator, SAO will use a default one which would simply copy all files into output directory.

Access Generator Instance

A generator instance will be created from exported object, if you want to access the instance you can use actions prompts as function, the generator instance will be available as this in the function:

module.exports = {
  prompts() {
    return [
      {
        name: 'author',
        message: 'What is your name',
        // Use the value of `git config --global user.name` as the default value
        default: this.gitUser.name
      }
    ]
  },
  // ...
}

For a complete list of options in saofile.js, please check out SAO File References.

# Creating Generators

# Folder Structure

# Access Generator Instance

Creating Generators

Folder Structure

Access Generator Instance