Quick Start

You can have plenty of ways to run hygen. Pick one of the following:

On macOS and Homebrew:

$ brew tap jondot/tap

$ brew install hygen

Globally with npm (or yarn):

$ npm i -g hygen

Or, if you like a no-strings-attached approach, use with npx

$ npx hygen ...

Should any of these be confusing to you, check out the binary releases where you'll find a binary for every major platform.

With this done, let's use a hygen generator.

To use a generator, we supply a GENERATOR ACTION pair like so (here mailer and new are examples).

$ hygen mailer new [NAME]

| ^----- action

`------------ generator

[[info]] | New in hygen 4.0.0: a positional NAME parameter to save a bit of typing. With versions prior to 4.0.0 you still have to use --name NAME.

Here's a quick run-down to get to your own generator:

$ hygen init self

$ hygen generator new awesome-generator

$ hygen awesome-generator new hello

To see the generator help, you could always do:

$ hygen generator help

Loaded templates: _templates

help:

hygen generator new [NAME] --action [ACTION]

hygen generator with-prompt [NAME] --action [ACTION]

Finally, use --dry to do a test-run of your generators.

Congratz! you've made a new generator called awesome-generator!

Let's walk through what we just did.

[[info]] | You can also install hygen from Homebrew or download a standalone binary. For more, see standalone.

Bootstrapping Your Project

Use hygen init self to start using it in your own project. hygen comes with two pre-built generators that helps you build your own - although it was built to ease the boilerplate fatigue for React, Redux, and Node.js it can be use for any technology really.

$ cd your-project

$ hygen init self

Loaded templates: src/templates

added: _templates/generator/with-prompt/hello.ejs.t

added: _templates/generator/with-prompt/prompt.js

added: _templates/generator/new/hello.ejs.t

This creates a project-local _templates folder for you at your source root with two helper generators that saves you time:

• hygen generator new generatorName - builds a new generator for you
• hygen generator with-prompt new generatorName - the same as before, only this one will be prompt driven.

[[info]] |###### Template Locality |On multi-team projects, each team can have their own templates right there in the shared repo.

Still in your project root, let's create a new generator now:

$ hygen generator new mygen

Loaded templates: _templates

added: _templates/mygen/new/hello.ejs.t

And let's use it:

$ hygen mygen new

Loaded templates: _templates

added: app/hello.js

[[info]] |###### Did You Notice? |Instead of bundling the hygen generator new command in hygen, we chose to copy it to your local templates folder. | | |In this way you can even tweak the way hygen generates new generators. It scales to a set up with different teams, each with its own preference.

That's it! we've done a basic walkthrough of hygen. Next up is a detailed overview of templates and generators.

Invoking Generators

There are more ways to play with a generator after you've built it:

# generate all files, with a 'name' variable

$ hygen example-prompt new reporter

# generate one specific file, picked up based on the substring 'mailer'

$ hygen example-prompt new:mailer reporter

# generate all resources that correspond to a regular expression

$ hygen example-prompt 'new:.*html' reporter

You made it to the end! nice! Now check out templates and generators.