Conditional file and syntax highlighting

[fabolome]

Hello Copier community!

We've recently started using Copier, and it's a very well-designed, easy-to-use, and practical tool! So thank you for Copier!

We now have a new challenge that isn't easy to solve. This challenge concerns conditional files such as: {% if create_example_module %}example_module.py{% endif %}

Everything works fine at this level, but unfortunately, when creating a file like this, we lose the syntax highlighting!

For development, we realized that losing syntax highlighting is very problematic! So, it's this syntax highlighting issue that we haven't been able to resolve with this conditional file model, even after various searches.

Then we tested: {% if create_example_module %}example_module.py{% endif %}.py.jinja, but as the documentation says, it's not a viable solution.

So we persevered and tried several possibilities to preserve syntax highlighting.

Since this only affects a few files for now, a temporary solution we found is as follows:

The directory structure was changed so that:

├── connector-template/
│   ├── {{connector_name}}/
│   └── src/
│            ├── example_module.py.jinja
...

and in the copier.yaml file:

...
_subdirectory: "connector-template"
...
use_cases_entitytype:
  help: Choice your entitytype ?
  default: []
  type: str
  multiselect: true
  choices:
      "xxxxxx": "xxxxxx"
      ...
...
_task
  - command:
    - rm
    - "-f"
    - "{{ _copier_conf.dst_path }}/{{ connector_name }}/src/example_module.py"
    when: "{{ 'xxxxxx' not in use_cases_entitytype }}"
  ...

So this way we have the file example_module.py copied with the values ​​from the template process in example_module.py.jinja.

Then, if don't want to keep the example_module.py file in the final output, we added a task rm -fr ....

What do you think of this?

Do you have any other ideas (EDI/VSCode plugin, workaround...) that would allow me to preserve both the conditional file template and syntax highlighting if the file is named {% if create_example_module %}example_module.py{% endif %}?
Do you plan to make any improvements to address this syntax highlighting issue with conditional files?

Thank you in advance and see you soon.

[sisp]

Thanks for the kind words about Copier, I'm glad it's useful for you and offers a pleasant experience! ❤️

I do have a few suggestions for you:

• I believe that your problem is not strictly related to conditional files but rather to any templated files that have the .jinja extension, as I assume your IDE infers the file type from the file extension. If that's true, syntax highlighting may break anyway because Jinja markup violates the syntax of the underlying language. If you use VS Code, the "Better Jinja" extension may be helpful, as it offers syntax highlighting for many languages mixed with Jinja markup. I've been using this extension for quite a while and have been very happy. That said, I just noticed that its last release is almost 2 years old. 😞 I hope it won't be abandoned.

• You can set _templates_suffix: "" in copier.yml to avoid the .jinja extension, so your IDE should infer the correct file type for syntax highlighting. Yet, Jinja markup might break it. Keep in mind that all files will be considered templates, so you need to be a bit more careful about file content that happens to look like Jinja markup but shall not be rendered.

• If you have files that contain no Jinja markup but shall be rendered conditionally, you can use the _exclude setting in copier.yml and conditionally render the file name to be excluded there while keeping the actual file name in the template without Jinja markup. For example, your example_module.py file could be named just like this and you'd add the following exclude in the copier.yml file:

  _exclude:
    - "{% if not create_example_module %}example_module.py{% endif %}"

[pawamoy]

I think conditional files are relevant, because they then don't end with .py.jinja directly, meaning even the Better Jinja extension won't be able to highlight them as Python+Jinja.

[sisp]

Ahhh, good point! I hadn't thought about this, thanks for emphasizing on this! 👍

[fabolome]

Thank you for your messages.

So I retested different filename scenarios:

• example_file.py.jinja = Python and Jinja syntax highlighting OK

• {% if create_example_module %}example_file.py{% endif %} = No syntax highlighting, but the condition is met

• {% if create_example_module %}example_file.py{% endif %}.jinja = No syntax highlighting for Python, but Jinja syntax highlighting OK, and the condition is met

• {% if create_example_module %}example_file.py{% endif %}.py.jinja = Python and Jinja syntax highlighting OK, but the condition is not met, and the file is copied in all cases as just .py!