Ohio University Third Party Application Template

This repository contains a template for third party applications. While not strictly required, the repo is a good way to build and deploy applications in a repeatable and familiar way.

The template is based on cookiecutter so is not usable directly, cookiecutter should be used to generate a new directory on your system for the project and then commit the changes to a new repository.

Usage

First, install cookiecutter.

Next, navigate to a folder on your system where you want your new project to be, then run:

cookiecutter https://github.com/ohioit/example-3rdparty-app.git

[!NOTE] If you are using SSH keys, be sure to change that to git@github.com/ohioit/example-3rdparty-app.git

Answer the questions presented by Cookiecutter. When you're finished, there should be a new directory with your project name. If you would like, you should be able to open that in your favorite editor. A devcontainer is included.

Next, create a new repository on https://github.com. Note that while this template should work on either our cloud or on-prem version, the included GitHub Actions were intended to work only with GHES repositories.

[!NOTE] TODO: Document configuring the repository for use with the included actions. For now, ask someone what you need to do.

Once you have the repository configured, use the instructions provided to commit your "existing code", the generated project directory, to your new repository.

Development

Template development is fairly easy inside of the devcontainer. When you are ready to test the template, simply cd ~ and run:

cookiecutter /workspaces/template-3rdparty-app

A new directory will be generated using the project slug you specified. You can either look at in the console, or use code {project-slug} to open it in Visual Studio Code.

To facilitate more rapid iteration, add the -f --replay tags to:

• -f: Overwrite the existing generated project
• --replay: Use a saved replay file to prevent being prompted for all of the questions again.

[!WARNING] A replay file saves a fully generated cookiecutter.json. If you make changes to the cookiecutter.json in the template, those changes will not be reflected in a replay. Either run without replaying again, or simply manually edit ~/.cookiecutter_replay/template-3rdparty-app.json.

For more information, check out the extensive cookiecutter documentation.