Cookiecutter

A command-line utility that creates projects from project templates, e.g. creating a Python package project from a Python package project template.

• Documentation: http://cookiecutter.rtfd.org
• GitHub: https://github.com/audreyr/cookiecutter
• Free software: BSD license
• PyPI: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/cookiecutter

Features

Did someone say features? Cookiecutter’s got more features than you can shake a stick at!

• Works with Python 2.6, 2.7, 3.3, and PyPy.

• Simple command line usage:

  # Create project from the cookiecutter-pypackage.git repo template
  # You'll be prompted to enter values.
  # Then it'll create your Python package based on those values.
  $ cookiecutter https://github.com/audreyr/cookiecutter-pypackage.git

• Can also use it at the command line with a local template:

  # Create project from the local cookiecutter-pypackage/ template
  $ cookiecutter cookiecutter-pypackage/

• Or use it from Python:

  from cookiecutter.main import cookiecutter
  
  # Create project from the cookiecutter-pypackage/ template
  cookiecutter('cookiecutter-pypackage/')
  
  # Create project from the cookiecutter-pypackage.git repo template
  cookiecutter('https://github.com/audreyr/cookiecutter-pypackage.git')
  

• Directory names and filenames can be templated. For example:

  {{cookiecutter.repo_name}}/{{cookiecutter.repo_name}}/{{cookiecutter.repo_name}}.py
  

• Supports unlimited levels of directory nesting.

• All templating is done with Jinja2.

• Project templates can be in any programming language or markup format: Python, JavaScript, Ruby, CoffeeScript, RST, Markdown, CSS, HTML, you name it. You can use multiple languages in the same project template.

• Simply define your template variables in a cookiecutter.json file. For example:

  {
      "full_name": "Audrey Roy",
      "email": "audreyr@gmail.com",
      "project_name": "A Lot of Effort",
      "repo_name": "alotofeffort",
      "project_short_description": "Deploy static HTML sites to S3 with the simple 'alotofeffort' command.",
      "release_date": "2013-07-10",
      "year": "2013",
      "version": "0.1.1"
  }
  

• If generating a project from a git repo template, you are prompted for input:

  • Prompts are the keys in cookiecutter.json.
  • Default responses are the values in cookiecutter.json.
  • Prompts are shown in order (thanks to those handy OrderedDicts!)

Available Templates

Here is a list of the working Cookiecutter project templates that exist:

• cookiecutter-pypackage: @audreyr‘s ultimate Python package project template.
• cookiecutter-jquery: A jQuery plugin project template based on jQuery Boilerplate.

Make your own, then submit a pull request adding yours to this list!

Similar projects

• Paste has a create option that creates a skeleton project.
• Diecutter: an API service that will give you back a configuration file from a template and variables.
• Django‘s startproject and startapp commands can take in a –template option.
• python-packager: Creates Python packages from its own template, with configurable options.
• Yeoman has a Rails-inspired generator system that provides scaffolding for apps.