Initializing the Template

Owned by Shrey Amin (Deactivated)
Last updated: Apr 05, 2023
3 min read

Step 1 - Initializing the Custom Template

We will now initialize the custom template we created in the previous page.

Open the terminal to an empty folder and run:

uip init -t <path to example_template.zip> -e "log_level=WaRn"

The command should run successfully with the following output:

Successfully initialized "example-template (1.0.0)" template in "<path may vary>"

The directory structure (ignoring *.pyc and __pycache__) should be as follows:

<folder name>/
├── .uip
│   └── config
│       └── uip.yml
├── __init__.py
├── requirements.txt
├── setup.cfg
├── setup.py
└── src
    ├── __init__.py
    ├── extension.py
    ├── extension.yml
    └── templates
        └── template.json

At this point, we have successfully initialized the custom template with the custom parameters, log_level and msg.

Open src/extension.py, and you should see my_msg on line 19 set to "test_message". Since a value for the msg variable wasn’t specified during initialization time, the default value (defined in template_config.yml) of test_message was substituted.

Open src/templates/template.json, and you should see the logLevel property set to Warn as expected.

Step 2 - Saving the Template using uip init

In the previous step, we initialized an Extension using the example_template.zip. If we want to do that again, the zip file will need to be specified again as well.

There are two ways to save the example_template for future use, and the first one is shown below:

Go ahead and delete the Extension initialized in the folder, including the .uip/ folder. Assuming it’s an empty folder, run

uip init -t <path to example_template.zip> -e "log_level=WaRn" -e "msg=sample message!" --save

Specifying --save will save the template in a location known to the CLI. If you now run

uip template list

you should see the example-template listed as well for future use

+--------------------+---------+---------------------------------------------------------+
| Extension Template | Version | Description                                             |
+--------------------+---------+---------------------------------------------------------+
| ue-task            | 1.0.0   | starter Extension with minimal code                     |
+--------------------+---------+---------------------------------------------------------+
| ue-publisher       | 1.0.0   | starter Extension with a local Universal Event template |
+--------------------+---------+---------------------------------------------------------+
| example-template   | 1.0.0   | this is the description for example template            |
+--------------------+---------+---------------------------------------------------------+

The value of name, version, and description from template_config.yml are used to populate the table entry for example-template

To see the variables we defined in template_config.yml, run 

uip template list example-template

which will print

+---------------+--------------+---------------------------------------+
| Variable Name | Default      | Description                           |
+---------------+--------------+---------------------------------------+
| msg           | test_message | message to print to STDOUT and STDERR |
| log_level     | Info         | Universal Template Log Level          |
+---------------+--------------+---------------------------------------+

Go ahead and delete the previously initialized Extension once again, including the .uip/ folder. Assuming it’s an empty folder, run

uip init -t example-template -e "log_level=WaRn" -e "msg=sample message!"

Notice that the path to the zip file no longer needs to be specified, since the template has already been saved.

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