Vim File Templates

All python modules I use have the same header. Usually I copy other modules but why not load a default template into a python file in vim?

Here a small snippet that does exactly that:

function! LoadFileTemplate()
  silent! 0r ~/.vim/templates/%:e.tmpl
  syn match vimTemplateMarker "<+.++>" containedin=ALL
  hi vimTemplateMarker guifg=#67a42c guibg=#112300 gui=bold
endfunction

function! JumpToNextPlaceholder()
  let old_query = getreg('/')
  echo search("<+.++>")
  exec "norm! c/+>/e<CR>"
  call setreg('/', old_query)
endfunction

autocmd BufNewFile * :call LoadFileTemplate()
nnoremap <C-J> :call JumpToNextPlaceholder()<CR>a
inoremap <C-J> <ESC>:call JumpToNextPlaceholder()<CR>a

What it does is looking for a template called “extension.tmpl” in ~/.vim/templates. If it finds one it loads it and highlights everything between “<+" and "+>” as placeholder. Hitting Ctrl+J jumps to the next placeholder.

An example template could look like this:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
"""
<+ MODULE_NAME +>

<+ DESCRIPTION +>

Licensed under the <+ LICENSE +> license, see X for more details etc.
Copyright by …
"""

If you want to load a file without a template, just hit “u” right at the beginning and the inserted template will disappear.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 3rd, 2007 at 2:24 pm and tagged as snippets, vim. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Vim File Templates”

  1. Hey, you’re a Vim user, I definitely love you ;)

    Thanks for this code, although I won’t use it at present since I don’t grok vim scripting. I currently rely on two Nautilus templates to create a new module or script. I used Geany for a while and then Gedit, both of which support some kind of templates or code snippets, but Geany crashes and Gedit is stupid, so I use Gvim: it integrates well with my desktop environnement and lets me learn the commands step by step. I use the python.vim script from the Python 3.0a1 source and I understand the basic stuff it does yet I can’t even change the way tabs are displayed (^I being ugly and hindering reading), I forgot where I read about that in the doc. The big problem is domesticating windows, tabs and buffers. Well, looking forward to read more entries about Vim :)

    Comment by Wok — Monday, December 10th, 2007 @ 6:21 am

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