Skip to main content

Project templates

As presented in the User's Guide, xpm is able to create new projects based on templates.

For this, pass the --template <package> option to xpm init.

Template project structure​

To be accepted as a template, a project must:

  • be an xpm package (have a package.json which includes an xpack property
  • have a property called main in package.json, pointing to a JavaScript file that can be consumed by await import() (formerly require())
  • the main file must export a class called XpmInitTemplate
  • an instances of this class must have a run() method.
  • have all dependencies bundled in (via bundleDependencies)

xpm project creation logic​

The steps invoked by xpm to initialise a project from a template are:

  • call pacote to install the xPack in the global home folder
  • identify the main property in package.json
  • import the XpmInitTemplate class from the main JavaScript file by invoking require()
  • instantiate the XpmInitTemplate class
  • execute the run() method.

The full code is in init.js, but a simplified version looks like this:

    await pacote.extract(config.template, globalPackagePath,
      { cache: cacheFolderPath })

    const mainTemplatePath = path.join(globalPackagePath, globalJson.main)

    context.CliError = CliError
    context.CliExitCodes = CliExitCodes

    const { XpmInitTemplate } = await import(mainTemplatePath)
    const xpmInitTemplate = new XpmInitTemplate(context)
    const code = await xpmInitTemplate.run()

TODO: explain the user configurable properties.