Executing Templates

With the sketch exec command, you can render a template and then execute it as a shell command.

To do this, you can use a regular file, a template with an id (either defined in the config file or inside the templates_dir), or even one defined within the command itself.

From Template

Let's say that we have a file named cmd_template.j2 inside our templates_dir, and it looks like this:

echo "{{ category }} engine... {{ category }}... argh!" > output_from_templates_dir.txt

ℹ️ You do not have to use .j2 as an extension for the template files. Any extension can be used.

We can refer to it by its id:

sketch --set category="gp2" exec -t cmd_template.j2

This will create a file containing

gp2 engine... gp2... argh!

From File

We can also use a file that is not inside templates_dir by using the -f flag and providing the path to said file. Relative paths will be resolved starting from the cwd.

So let's say that we have this template file:

echo "all the time you have to leave the {{ something }}!" > output_from_file.txt

We launch the command like this:

sketch --set something="space" exec -f tests/commands_tests/cmd_from_file.j2

To create a file containing:

all the time you have to leave the space!

From Literal Template

Templates can also be defined directly as part of the command.

sketch --set general="kenobi" exec 'echo "hello there!\ngeneral {{ general }}." > command_output.txt'

This creates a file containing:

hello there!
general kenobi.