VS-Code Folder Templates

What is this and why

VS-Code Folder Templates is an extension that creates your folders/files as specified in custom templates.

Why? Because creating the same directories over and over again is annoying to do manually.

Features

• Create Templates for folder structures and files and then let the extension do the rest.
• Spend your time actually programming and not creating files.

Templating

To create your templates you have two options.

1. Create templates on your File System
2. Go into your settings.json from VSCode and create templates manually. (Open the command palette and select "Open Settings (JSON)" to easily access your settings.json)

Interpolation

The value <FTName> (or [FTName]) will always be interpolated into the component name you are asked for when creating the structure. Adding a transformer with this pattern <FTName | transformer> (or <FTName % transformer>) will give you the ability to transform your componentname wherever needed. The currently supported transformers are:

• lowercase
• uppercase
• camelcase
• capitalcase
• constantcase
• dotcase
• headercase
• nocase
• paramcase
• pascalcase
• pathcase
• sentencecase
• snakecase
• singular
• plural
• lowercasefirstchar
• capitalize
• kebabcase

It is possible to specify a set of custom Variables which will be interpolated as well. You will be asked to enter a value for every custom variable defined. They can be transformed the same way as the default <FTName>

UPDATE: Now you can use absolute path parts in your template.

To use corresponding part, specify - , depending on how long path is picked. For example for path "P:\projects\contributing\vscode-folder-templates": P - , projects - , contributing - . Path parts can be transformed. Examples

Date values

As of v3.12.0 it is possible to add dates to a file name or its content. However it will only be possible to add the current time in your local time zone or UTC. The way to achieve this is by using the placeholder \[DATE_NOW(FORMATSTRING)\] for local timezone or \[DATE_NOW_UTC(FORMATSTRING)\] for UTC time.

As an example [DATE_NOW('yyyy-mm-dd')] will result in 2024-03-04. Please take a look at this https://date-fns.org/v2.30.0/docs/format documentation to see all the available formatting patterns.

Thanks to the change-case and pluralize libraries, for the transformations

• https://github.com/blakeembrey/change-case
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/pluralize

Creating templates on the File System

One option is to create a .fttemplates folder in your project root and save all templates you want to access in this project there. This path can be changed via the folderTemplates.templateFolderPath setting in your vscode settings.

To use global templates over multiple projects use the Set Custom Global Folder Templates Directory command to choose a folder which functions as a global .fttemplates directory.

DEPRECATED: You can also use the global template folder that exists in the directory of this extension.

Create a folder with files and folders inside your template directory and use placeholders wherever you need them. That's it. You created your template. It works out of the box but if you need some special settings for a template you can create a .ftsettings.json file inside your template folder.

See more in the examples

folderTemplates.templateFolderPath

This setting is used to deviate from the default .fttemplates folder path at the root of your project folder. If this setting is set then Folder Templates will look for your templates at the specified path (relative to your project root)

• Default .fttemplates

Available .ftsettings.json Properties

Creating your Template in VS Code settings.json {#template-format}

There are two key parts to creating your FT Templates. Folder Structures and File Templates.

folderTemplates.structures {#foldertemplatestructures}

The folderTemplates.structures option takes an array of objects where one object equals one Folder Structure.

Example Structure

{
  "name": "My Custom Template",
  "customVariables": ["CustomVar", "CustomVar2"],
  "omitParentDirectory": true,
  "structure": [
    {
      "fileName": "<FTName>.jsx",
      "template": "Typescript Functional Component"
    },
    {
      "fileName": "tests/<FTName>.test.js"
    },
    {
      "fileName": "index.js",
      "template": "IndexFile"
    },
    {
      "fileName": "bashfile.sh",
      "template": "echo \"Hello World\"",
      "isExecutable": true
    },
    {
      "fileName": "<CustomVar>",
      "template": "EmptyDirectory"
    }
  ]
}

If a template is specified for a file its value should match one of the names of your folderTemplates.fileTemplates or have the EmptyDirectory value. If the template value is EmptyDirectory it will create an empty directory instead of a file.

folderTemplates.fileTemplates {#filetemplates}

• The key of the key-value pair is the name of the template
• The value can either be
  • an array where every item in the array is a string. Every new item in the array will be written into a new line.
  • a string and you can annotate the linebreaks yourself with \n.

Two example filetemplates

{
  "folderTemplates.fileTemplates": {
    "Typescript Functional Component": [
      "import React from 'react';",
      "",
      "interface <FTName>Props {",
      "}",
      "",
      "const <FTName> = (props) => {",
      "  return <div/>;",
      "};",
      "",
      "export default <FTName>;"
    ],
    "Indexfile": "import <FTName> from './<FTName>'\n\nexport default <FTName>;"
  }
}

folderTemplates.templateNotation

This setting can be used to globally customize how template strings that should be interpolated can be annotated. If you would like to customize this on a per template basis you can do so in the ftsettings.json file.

  folderTemplates.templateNotation: {
    "start": ["<<%", "[[["],
    "end": ["%>>", "]]]"]
  }

this example would make it so that you have to annotate the strings like this <<%FTName%>> or [[[FTName]]] instead of using the defaults.

Appending or Prepending content to existing files

There is a special placeholder <__existingcontent__> or [__existingcontent__] to read content from an existing file if you want to append or prepend text to this file. However this requires the setting overwriteExistingFiles to be set to true or prompt. See this example for more information.

UPDATE: Now you can patch files using substring search.

Use this structure in your template. This is example I use for Redux reducer:

[__precisecontent__]
before: default:
    case <Path6>ActionTypes.SET_<FTName % snakecase&uppercase>:
      return state.merge({
        <FTName | lowercasefirstchar>: action.payload,
      });

[__endprecisecontent__]

here we search " default:" substring in file. In case we specified "before" all remaining part down to the [endprecisecontent] will be inserted before line that has been found. Or you can have "after", in this case remaing content will be inserted after that line.

Using the command createFolderStructure with a keybind

You can add a string argument to the keybind you are using to define a static folder in which you want the new folder to be created.

{
  "key": "ctrl+0", //or your preffered keybind,
  "command": "FT.createFolderStructure",
  "args": "src/components"
}

If you put the argument "__current" it will create the folder next to the file that is currently open in the editor.

Migrating to 3.0

The name of the extension was changed which resulted in some placeholders and the config namespace being changed.

• The FFSName Placeholder no longer works. Please replace it with the new placeholder FTName
• Please switch the configuration keys from fastFolderStructure.structures to folderTemplates.structures and fastFolderStructure.fileTemplates to folderTemplates.fileTemplates.
• Calling the FFS.createFolderStructure command will no longer work. Please replace it with FT.createFolderStructure

Credits

The idea for FT came after seeing this extension ee92.folderize

Contributors ✨

Thanks goes to these wonderful people (emoji key):

Dennis Collon 💻 🤔 📖	Marco Cavanna 🤔	Matej Rešetár 🐛	Brydon McCluskey 🤔	Gytis Ramanauskas 🐛	howagain 🤔	Torben Ewert 💻 🤔 📖
arash-bizcover 🐛	ofir130 🤔	Nelson 🤔	Óscar 🤔	Nicolas Karg 🤔	mrelemerson 💻 📖 🤔	thimo1 🎨
pdgustavo 🤔	André Feijó Meirelles 🐛	Yourim Yi 🐛	Jonah Lawrence 📖	David Freer 🤔 📖	deasems 🤔	magick93 🤔
jrmora 🐛	ThumNet 💻	hondzik 💻	tjunxin 💻	galionix 💻

This project follows the all-contributors specification. Contributions of any kind welcome!