Cookiecutter is mainly known as a tool for software project templates. But its possible use cases are much more versatile: plain text and code, small text snippets, multiple files, and whole projects.

The main goal of this workshop is to detect possibilities for automation in your day-to-day and less frequent tasks.
The secondary goal is to get acquinted with an amazing and flexible tool.

Overview

This 4-hour workshop will have 4 major parts:

Without coding:

• Hour 1: Cookiecutter basics
• Hour 2: Advanced Cookiecutter: load variables from multiple sources, dictionary variables

With coding:

• Hour 3: More powerful automations with pre and post hooks and Jinja extensions.
• Hour 4: Combining the techniques learned and discussing various examples.

Automation without Coding

1. Hour: Cookiecutter Basics

Start with small

• Convert your directory into a template.
• Introduce variables.
• Getting to know the major parts: cookiecutter.json, Jinja, the project root directory.

2. Hour: Advanced Cookiecutter Features

• Loading variable values from a file.
• Configuration.
• Dictionary variables.

More Powerful Automations with Code

3. Hour

• Automate your project setup with pre and post hooks.
• Put the generated files into their right context.
• Jinja extensions: More dynamic variable values.

Real-World Examples

Discussing versatile examples and see how they combine the elements we've just learned.

Types of examples:

• small cookiecutter with few variables for quick scaffolding
• big cookiecutter with many variables to enforce best practices
• application using cookiecutter as a Python library

Topics of examples:

• non-code
• content & code, e.g. a MkDocs site
• software project: code, test, documentation, developer tools, CI/CD infrastructure
• Jupyter notebook