Question about asking questions and generation in a loop

[amitjindal]

Hi, I want to understand how I would attempt to do the following. I tried to find answers in documentation, and other reference implementations and even tests. But they don't all seem to add up.

Here's what I want to do

I want to generate source code for all the models in a django application along with their templates, views and other files. If you are not familiar with django, that's okay. I will explain.
So given I have 2 models, I want to ask questions related to each model and then generate code. The models can also be 3/5 or any number.

For example, if I have first and second as models, I would expect to get:

1. forms.py (contains definitions for both first and second form).
2. templates/first.html
3. templates/second.html

In essence, I need to loop inside the file as well as on the directory itself.

Here's how I thought I would approach this

I wanted to write the model structure in a JSON or YML (list of models and their associated properties.

project_name:
  type: str
  help: Your project name

author_username:
  type: str
  help: Your username (e.g. on GitHub)

models:
  - first:
      type: str
      help: First model name
  - second:
      type: str
      help: Second model name

When I run this the output is:

author_username? Format: str
🎤 [None]: dsf

models? Format: yaml
🎤 [[{'first': {'type': 'str', 'help': 'First model name'}}, {'second': {'type': 'str', 'help': 'Second model name'}}]]: 

    create  README.md
    create  .copier-answers.yml
    create  Makefile

I wanted copier to recurse and ask questions about first and second.

Other possibilities

Invoking multiple times

As an alternative I am thinking about writing a python program where I would read the models data from a JSON or YML and merge that with questions somehow to get the desired outcome. Maybe even run the copy command multiple times with each model.

So I want to know:

1. Is there a way to do this?
2. How can I invoke the copy command with additional data that would start asking questions?
3. Will it append to answers?
4. Will it append to generated files?

Asking questions in a loop

Second alternative may be to ask questions in a loop, collect answers and then pass them to copy command as DATA and that could do the trick. But here I don't know how to:

1. How to invoke the question asking routines that would return me answers to current model.
2. Generate multiple files for each model.
3. Store answers

I am sort of lost and maybe copier cannot do what I am trying.

Please guide.

[yajo]

The short answer is no. Copier is designed to be configurable using a YAML file, which is just data, so it cannot contain logic.

However, there are alternative strategies you can follow:

1. Consider one model to be one template. This way, you con copy as many times as models you need. And each one has its own questionary.
2. Using copier's api to make it behave differently. Maybe, implementing a custom questionary and then passing the answers to the worker. Check latest alphas if you mean to do this, because api was refactored for v6.
3. Using tasks to automate something after rendering? I hope Allow finer control over execution of tasks #240 helps on that when fixed.

[amitjindal]

Thanks for your help. I will try.
Sorry for posting this on issues. I never used discussions before and didn't knew this existed.

If I find a way I will post my findings here for others.