Note: with the advent of generics in go 1.18 this package is now obsolete. Please use go 1.18 and its generic facilities instead. I will keep this package here for existing users, but I won't be updating it any more - @ncw
This tool manages package based templates for the Go language using "go generate" which requires go 1.4.
Install using go get
go get github.com/ncw/gotemplate/...
and this will build the gotemplate
binary in $GOPATH/bin
.
It will also pull in a set of templates you can start using straight away
To use a template, first you must tell gotemplate
that you want to
use it using a special comment in your code. For example
//go:generate gotemplate "github.com/ncw/gotemplate/set" mySet(string)
This tells go generate
to run gotemplate
and that you want to use
the set template with the string
type parameter and with the local
name mySet
.
Now run go generate
in your code directory with no arguments. This
will instantiate the template into a file called gotemplate_mySet.go
which will provide a mySet
type and newMySet
and newSizedMySet
functions to make them. Note that the first letter of your custom name
is still capitalized when it is not at the beginning of the new name.
$ go generate
substituting "github.com/ncw/gotemplate/set" with mySet(string) into package main
Written 'gotemplate_mySet.go'
If you wish to change what the output file names look like then you
can use the -outfmt format
flag. The format must contain a single
instance of the %v
verb which will be replaced with the template
instance name (default "gotemplate_%v")
Instantiating the templates into your project gives them the ability to use internal types from your project.
If you use an initial capital when you name your template instantiation then any external functions will be public. Eg
//go:generate gotemplate "github.com/ncw/gotemplate/set" MySet(string)
Would give you MySet
, NewMySet
and NewSizedMySet
instead.
You can use multiple templates and you can use the same template with different parameters. In that case you must give it a different name, eg
//go:generate gotemplate "github.com/ncw/gotemplate/set" StringSet(string)
//go:generate gotemplate "github.com/ncw/gotemplate/set" FloatSet(float64)
If the parameters have spaces in then they need to be in quotes, eg
//go:generate gotemplate "github.com/ncw/gotemplate/sort" "SortGt(string, func(a, b string) bool { return a > b })"
All top level identifiers will be substituted when the template is instantiated. This is to ensure that they are unique if the template is instantiated more than once.
Any identifiers with the template name in (eg Set
) will have the
template name (eg Set
) part substituted. If the template name does
not begin the identifier, Go's casing style is respected and the
first letter of your new identifier is capitalized. (eg 'newMySet'
instead of 'newmySet').
Any identifiers without the template name in will just be post-fixed with the template name.
So if this was run
//go:generate gotemplate "github.com/ncw/gotemplate/set" MySet(string)
This would substitute these top level identifiers
Set
toMySet
NewSet
toNewMySet
NewSizedSet
toNewSizedMySet
utilityFunc
toutilityFuncMySet
Depending on whether the template name is public (initial capital) or not, all the public external identifiers will have their initial capitals turned into lower case. So if this was run
//go:generate gotemplate "github.com/ncw/gotemplate/set" mySet(string)
This would substitute
Set
tomySet
NewSet
tonewMySet
NewSizedSet
tonewSizedMySet
utilityFunc
toutilityFuncMySet
Templates can be installed using go get
because they are normal Go
packages. Eg
go get github.com/someones/template
Will install a template package you can use in your code with
//go:generate gotemplate "github.com/someones/template" T(Potato)
Then instantiate with
go generate
It is expected that the generated files will be checked into version
control, and users of your code will just run go get
to fetch it.
go generate
will only be run by developers of the package.
Templates are valid go packages. They should compile and have tests and be usable as-is. Because they are packages, if you aren't writing a public template you should put them in a subdirectory of your project most likely.
To make a Go package a template it should have one or more
declarations and a special comment signaling to gotemplate
what the
template is called and what its parameters are. Supported
parameterized declarations are type, const, var and func.
Here is an example from the set package.
// template type Set(A)
type A int
This indicates that the base name for the template is Set
and it has
one type parameter A
. When you are writing the template package
make sure you use A
instead of int
where you want it to be
substituted with a new type when the template is instantiated.
Similarly, you could write a package with a const parameter.
// template type Vector(A, N)
type A int
const N = 2
type Vector[N]A
This indicates that the base name for the template is Vector
and it
has one type parameter A
and one constant parameter N
. Again, all
uses of N
in the template code will be replaced by a literal value
when the template is instantiated.
All the definitions of the template parameters will be removed from the instantiated template.
All test files are ignored.
There may be constraints on the types which aren't understood by
gotemplate
. For instance the set requires that the types are
comparable. If you try this you'll get a compile error for example.
//go:generate gotemplate "github.com/ncw/gotemplate/set" BytesSet([]byte)
Only one .go file is used when reading template definitions at the moment (programmer laziness - will fix at some point!)
- v0.06 - 2017-05-05
- Add -outfmt string (thanks Paul Jolly)
- v0.05 - 2016-02-26
- Fix docs and examples
- More set methods - thanks Adam Willis
- Fix missing error check in code generation
- v0.04 - 2014-12-23
- Fixed multi-line type declarations
- v0.03 - 2014-12-22
- Allow const and var to be substituted as template parameters
- v0.02 - 2014-12-15
- Fixed multi-line const/var declarations
- v0.01 - 2014-12-10
- Change renaming rules to make better Go names. This only affects private exports, eg for
mySet
in the example above,NewSet
becomesnewMySet
(wasnewmySet
)NewSizedSet
becomesnewSizedMySet
(wasnewSizedmySet
)utilityFunc
becomesutilityFuncMySet
(utilityFuncmySet
)
- This is a backwards incompatible change
- Change renaming rules to make better Go names. This only affects private exports, eg for
- v0.00 - 2014-10-05
- First public release
Make a set type for non comparable things? Pass in a compare routine?
Make sure that types implement an interface?
Optional parameters?
All code (templates, use of templates and template instantiations) should be normal Go code - no special types / extensions.
All configuration done with specially formatted comments
Should provide lots practical templates people can use right now.
This is free software under the terms of MIT the license (check the COPYING file included in this package).
Portions of the code have been copied from the Go source. These are identified by comments at the head of each file and these are Copyright (c) The Go Authors. See the GO-LICENSE file for full details.
The project website is at:
There you can file bug reports, ask for help or contribute patches.
- Nick Craig-Wood [email protected]
- Patrick Oyarzun [email protected]
- Adam Willis [email protected]
- Paul Jolly [email protected]
- Igor Mikushkin [email protected]