VS-Code Folder Templates

What is this and why

VS-Code Folder Templates is an extension which 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.

Create templates on your File System
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>

Examples

Input	Transformer	Result	Description
LOWERCASE	<FTName \| lowercase>	lowercase
uppercase	<FTName \| uppercase>	UPPERCASE
My-new-component	<FTName \| camelcase>	myNewComponent	(First letter is lowercased. Every letter behind a special character will be capitalized)
test string	<FTName \| capitalcase>	Test String
test string	<FTName \| constantcase>	TEST_STRING
test string	<FTName \| dotcase>	test.string
test string	<FTName \| headercase>	Test-String
test string	<FTName \| nocase>	test string
test string	<FTName \| paramcase>	test-string
my-new-component	<FTName \| pascalcase>	MyNewComponent	(First letter and every letter behind a special character will be capitalized)
test string	<FTName \| pathcase>	test/string
test string	<FTName \| sentencecase>	Test string
test string	<FTName \| snakecase>	test_string
boxes	<FTName \| singular>	box
box	<FTName \| plural>	boxes
wooden box	<FTName \| plural?snakecase?uppercase>	WOODEN_BOXES	it is possible to combine transformations with the "?" or "&" operator, these will be performed from left to right.
wooden box	[FTName % plural&snakecase&uppercase]	WOODEN_BOXES	"&" operator example of row above
MyNewComponent	<FTName \| lowercasefirstchar>	myNewComponent
myNewComponent	<FTName \| capitalize>	MyNewComponent	just like capitalcase
myNewComponent	<FTName \| kebabcase>	my-new-component	just like paramcase
aaa	<FTName \| replacefirst('a', 'b')>	baa	IMPORTANT: Due to filesystem limitations (thanks Windows) only single quotes (`'`) will work to annotate the string in the replacefirst function.
aaa	<FTName \| replacelast('a', 'b')>	aab	IMPORTANT: Due to filesystem limitations (thanks Windows) only single quotes (`'`) will work to annotate the string in the replacelast function.
aaa	<FTName \| replace('a', 'b')>	bbb	IMPORTANT: Due to filesystem limitations (thanks Windows) only single quotes (`'`) will work to annotate the string in the replace function.

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

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

Key	Type	Default	Description
name	string	Name of parent folder	Name of the folder Template
customVariables	string[] `variableName=>defaultvalue`	-	Custom variables to be interpolated upon folder creation
omitParentDirectory	boolean	false	If set to true FT will create all files directly inside the current folder instead of creating a new folder and all the files inside of it.
omitFTName	boolean	false	If set to true FT will not ask for a component name. (Can only be set to true if omitParentDirectory is true as well)
overwriteExistingFiles	"never" \| "always" \| "prompt"	"never"	If set to always all existing files will be overwritten. If set to prompt user will be asked which files shall be overwritten upon foldercreation.
openFilesWhenDone	string[]	-	List of files to open when the Folder Template is created. (Supports use of variables, see examples)
absolutePath	boolean	false	If set to true all files will be created relative to the project root. Not relative to the folder you clicked on. (Can only be set to true if omitParentDirectory is true as well)
templateNotation	{start: string[], end: string[]}	`{start: ["<","["], end: [">", "]"]}`	If you would like to customize how to annotate strings that should be interpolated use this option

Creating your Template in VS Code settings.json

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

folderTemplates.structures

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": "<CustomVar>",
      "template": "EmptyDirectory"
    }
  ]
}

Key	Type	Default	Description
name	string	Name of parent folder	Name of the folder Template
customVariables	string[] `variableName=>defaultvalue`	-	Custom variables to be interpolated upon folder creation
structure	{fileName: string, template?: string}[]	-	Every object in this array represents a File or Folder that will be created
omitParentDirectory	boolean	false	If set to true FT will create all files directly inside the current folder instead of creating a new folder and all the files inside of it.
omitFTName	boolean	false	If set to true FT will not ask for a component name. (Can only be set to true if omitParentDirectory is true as well)
overwriteExistingFiles	"never" \| "always" \| "prompt"	"never"	If set to always all existing files will be overwritten. If set to prompt user will be asked which files shall be overwritten upon foldercreation.
openFilesWhenDone	string[]	-	List of files to open when the Folder Template is created. (Supports use of variables, see examples)
absolutePath	boolean	false	If set to true all files will be created relative to the project root. Not relative to the folder you clicked on. (Can only be set to true if omitParentDirectory is true as well)
templateNotation	{start: string[], end: string[]}	`{start: ["<","["], end: [">", "]"]}`	If you would like to customize how to annotate strings that should be interpolated use this option

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

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.

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 💻