I recently started working with Plaster and I really like this module. I covered my first template in my Adventures in Plaster blog post last week. I have been pulling together ideas for more Plaster templates and I thought up a fun one to work on.

I am going to build a Plaster template that builds a Plaster template. I am calling this new template GetPlastered.

This will be a good example demonstrating the TemplateFile features of Plaster.

Index

Index
Project plan
Starting a new template
Planning the questions
- Creating parameters
TemplateFile
GetPlastered in action
- Example
Wrapping it up

Project plan

My primary goal is to have a Plaster template that will turn an existing folder/project into a Plaster template. Our Plaster template will generate a PlasterTemplate.xml for that folder.

This can be confusing because we are also creating a PlasterTemplate.xml to make this template that generates a PlasterTemplate.xml for a new template. It is like we are writing code that writes the same code that we are writing.

Starting a new template

I already have a repository for my Plaster templates, so all I need to do is create the initial template manifest.

$templateName = 'GetPlastered'
$manifestProperties = @{
    Path = ".\$templateName\PlasterManifest.xml"
    Title = "Generate Plaster Maifest"
    TemplateName = $templateName
    TemplateVersion = '0.0.1'
    Author = 'Kevin Marquette'
}

New-Item -Path $templateName -ItemType Directory
New-PlasterManifest @manifestProperties

Planning the questions

Because my intent is that this template will be used instead of the New-PlasterManifest Cmdlet, we need to capture that functionality.

Template Name
Template Title
Template Author

That should sum up the information we need to collect.

Creating parameters

Now we can turn those planned questions into parameters. These questions are straightforward parameters to create.

<parameter name="TemplateName" 
           type="text" 
           prompt="Template Name" 
           default="${PLASTER_DestinationName}" />

<parameter name="TemplateTitle" 
           type="text" 
           prompt="Template Title" 
           default="${PLASTER_PARAM_TemplateName" />

<parameter name="TemplateAuthor" 
           type="user-fullname" 
           prompt="Author" />

I added these parameters to the parameters section of the PlasterManifest.xml file.

For the TemplateName default value, I use the name of the destination folder that is specified when Invoke-Plaster is invoked.

For the TemplateAuthor, I used user-fullname for the type. That is a special type that pulls the value from the user’s .gitconfig as a default.

TemplateFile

Now we need to create a TemplateFile to generate the PlasterTemplate.xml file. The first half of the TemplateFile will be basic value substitution.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<plasterManifest schemaVersion="1.0" 
xmlns="http://www.microsoft.com/schemas/PowerShell/Plaster/v1">
<metadata>
    <name><%= $PLASTER_PARAM_TemplateName %></name>
    <id><%= $PLASTER_GUID1 %></id>
    <version>0.0.1</version>
    <title><%= $PLASTER_PARAM_TemplateTitle %></title>
    <description></description>
    <author><%= $PLASTER_PARAM_TemplateAuthor %></author>
    <tags></tags>
</metadata>
<parameters>
</parameters>
<content>
...

All the magic happens in the second half of this TemplateFile. We walk the destination folder for both folders and files to create the content section.

...
  <content>
<%
$path = $PLASTER_DestinationPath

$folders = Get-ChildItem -Path $path -Directory -Recurse
$files = Get-ChildItem -Path $path -File -Recurse

$path += '\'  

foreach($node in $folders.fullname)
{
    $destination = $node.replace($path,'')
"    <file source='' destination='$destination'/>" 
}

foreach($node in $files.fullname)
{
    $source = $node.replace($path,'')
"    <file source='$source' destination=''/>" 
}

%>
  </content>
</plasterManifest>

Then we save this into a template file called PlasterTemplate.aps1 and add a templateFile entry to our original PlasterTemplate.xml content section.

<content>
    <templateFile source="PlasterTemplate.aps1" 
                  destination="PlasterManifest.xml" />
</content>

I can call that template file anything I want and could easily have left the file extension as xml. I am currently using .aps1 as that designation.

GetPlastered in action

Now we can take any folder and turn that into a Plaster template. The idea is that I would build out the folder first with all the files that should be included. Then instead of running New-PlasterManifest, I would use Invoke-Plaster with this template.

Example

Here is a quick example to see this working. Lets say I have two folders of common tests that I drop into modules. I first move all of these to a new folder called MyTests.

MyTests
├───spec
│       module.feature
│       module.Steps.ps1
│
└───tests
        Export-PSGraph.Tests.ps1
        Feature.Tests.ps1
        Help.Tests.ps1
        Project.Tests.ps1
        Regression.Tests.ps1
        Unit.Tests.ps1

Now we run the GetPlastered template.

PS:> Invoke-Plaster -DestinationPath .\MyTests -TemplatePath .\GetPlastered
____  _           _
|  _ \| | __ _ ___| |_ ___ _ __
| |_) | |/ _` / __| __/ _ \ '__|
|  __/| | (_| \__ \ ||  __/ |
|_|   |_|\__,_|___/\__\___|_|
                                            v1.0.1
==================================================
Template  Name (MyTests):
Template Title (MyTests):
Author (KevinMarquette):
Destination path: .\MyTests
Create PlasterManifest.xml

I just accepted all the defaults and my .\MyTests\PlasterManifest.xml was created. Here is the contents of that file showing every file in the content section.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<plasterManifest schemaVersion="1.0" 
xmlns="http://www.microsoft.com/schemas/PowerShell/Plaster/v1">
<metadata>
    <name>MyTests</name>
    <id>3c3480d8-c2fa-4777-bb0c-a2453c8147c3</id>
    <version>0.0.1</version>
    <title></title>
    <description></description>
    <author>KevinMarquette</author>
    <tags>GetPlastered</tags>
</metadata>
<parameters>
</parameters>
<content>
    <file source='' destination='spec'/>
    <file source='' destination='tests'/>
    <file source='spec\module.feature' destination=''/>
    <file source='spec\module.Steps.ps1' destination=''/>
    <file source='tests\Feature.Tests.ps1' destination=''/>
    <file source='tests\Help.Tests.ps1' destination=''/>
    <file source='tests\Project.Tests.ps1' destination=''/>
    <file source='tests\Regression.Tests.ps1' destination=''/>
    <file source='tests\Unit.Tests.ps1' destination=''/>
</content>
</plasterManifest>

We can now use this new template to deploy our tests.

PS:> Invoke-Plaster -DestinationPath .\TestFolder -TemplatePath .\MyTests
____  _           _
|  _ \| | __ _ ___| |_ ___ _ __
| |_) | |/ _` / __| __/ _ \ '__|
|  __/| | (_| \__ \ ||  __/ |
|_|   |_|\__,_|___/\__\___|_|
                                            v1.0.1
==================================================
Destination path: .\TestFolder
Create spec\
Create tests\
Create spec\module.feature
Create spec\module.Steps.ps1
Create tests\Feature.Tests.ps1
Create tests\Help.Tests.ps1
Create tests\Project.Tests.ps1
Create tests\Regression.Tests.ps1
Create tests\Unit.Tests.ps1

PS:> cd .\TestFolder
PS:> tree /f

TestFolder
├───spec
│       module.feature
│       module.Steps.ps1
│
└───tests
        Feature.Tests.ps1
        Help.Tests.ps1
        Project.Tests.ps1
        Regression.Tests.ps1
        Unit.Tests.ps1

Wrapping it up

Other than the layers of inception going on, this really was an easy template to create. This was a fun project and I have it published with my other Plaster templates.

I am working on setting this up to be published to the PSGallery. I’ll update this post when that happens. I hope you enjoy it.