Presentation at an AFPY event, march 2013, Paris.

By Rémy Hubscher and Benoit Bryon.

Slides available on https://diecutter.readthedocs.org

This presentation is published under CC BY 3.0

Setup template "diecutter.ini" server-side:

diecutter.template_dir = {{ template_dir|default('') }}
diecutter.token = {{ token|default('') }}
diecutter.readonly = {{ readonly|default('false') }}

Generate configuration client-side:

wget --post-data="template_dir=src/templates"  \
     --output-document="diecutter.ini"     \
     http://diecutter.io/diecutter.ini

django startproject reloaded:

curl --data "django_project=demo"                      \
     http://diecutter.io/+django_project+  \
     > demo.zip

• needs PasteScript and templates installed locally
• template registration is a pain:
  • create template files (Cheetah markup)
  • create template class (Cheetah Template)
  • update template package's entry points (setup.py)
  • update your environment (reinstall/update)
• Cheetah?

• I just want to render a template against data!
• I don't need Chef, Salt, Puppet & co.
• Templates aren't only useful in provisioning.

And I'd like to reuse templates whatever the provisioning tool!

• POST data and retrieve generated files
• GET raw content of templates
• PUT templates from client to server
• DELETE template ⁽¹⁾
• OPTIONS lists template variables ⁽¹⁾
• PATCH alters default values of variables ⁽¹⁾

⁽¹⁾ Work in progress.

• focus on API
• no builtin client
• no builtin form validation (have a look at daybed)

• template resources backend
  • Today: local filesystem.
  • Tomorrow: remote Git/Hg/..., NoSQL, include/extend URLs
• template engines
  • Today: Jinja.
  • Tomorrow: Cheetah, ERB, XSLT...
• response writers
  • Today: return single file or ZIP archive.
  • Tomorrow: tar.gz, write to storage, attachments, streaming, asynchronous generation...

• today: proof of concept, focus on API
• tomorrow: rock-solid defaults, focus on stability & performance
• later: make your own, focus on extensibility

• PyPI: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/diecutter
• Code repository: https://github.com/diecutter/diecutter/
• Bugs and features: https://github.com/diecutter/diecutter/issues
• Slides: http://tech.novapost.fr