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 [
      {
        type: 'input',
        name: 'name',
        message: 'What is the name of the new project',
        default: this.outFolder,
        result: (val) => val.toLowerCase(),
      },
      {
        type: 'input',
        name: 'description',
        message: 'How would you descripe the new project',
        default: `my ${superb()} project`,
      },
      {
        type: 'input',
        name: 'username',
        message: 'What is your GitHub username',
        default: this.gitUser.username || this.gitUser.name,
        result: (val) => val.toLowerCase(),
        store: true,
      },
      {
        type: 'input',
        name: 'email',
        message: 'What is your email?',
        default: this.gitUser.email,
        store: true,
      },
      {
        type: 'input',
        message: 'The URL of your website',
        default({ username }) {
          return `github.com/${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 SAO Instance#

If you want to access the instance you can use actions prompts as function, the SAO instance will be available as this in the function:

module.exports = {
  prompts() {
    return [
      {
        type: 'input',
        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 GeneratorConfig References.