README.md

CoTeTo - Code Templating Tool

CoTeTo is a tool for the generation of source code and other text from different data sources. It can be easily extended, runs with a GUI, a commandline interface or can be integrated in other python projects as a module.

This software is work-in-progress. Documentation may be incomplete or missing and the software may not run properly. Different components of CoTeTo will execute arbitrary code from different sources. It's very easy to hide malicious code in filters or templates. Use CoTeTo at your own risk!

Concept

CoTeTo uses components called loaders to read or generate the data structures, optional filters to manipulate the data and templates to generate the formatted output. Generators are the documents of the CoTeTo system. A generator is a flexible container with filters, templates and additional information. A set of standard loaders is provided with CoTeTo, but generators can also store and use custom loaders.

CoTeTo manages a list of generators and data loaders. A generator is a package (contained in folder or a zip file) that contains output specific elements:

• general information in file Package.inf (Windows ini-file syntax)
• template files (mako) in file Templates
• preprocessor / filter function in folder Filter (optional)
• loader code in the folder Loaders (optional)
• additional files for the project - not uses by CoTeTo (optional)

Generators are loaded from a list of folders. Each generator (defined by a name and a version number in Package.inf) depends on a specific loader. Loaders are python modules loaded from the module package CoTeTo.Loaders or from the generator.

Dependencies

1. CoTeTo works with vanilla Python 32bit or 64bit version >=3.5 . WinPython is recommended, because it includes most packages.
2. WinPython does not include the Mako templating engine, install it by running pip install -U mako on a Python-enabled command prompt
3. If you are not using WinPython, you also need to install the Jinja2 templating engine by running pip install -U jinja2 on a Python-enabled command prompt
4. If you want to use the XML loader you need to install the lxml package: pip install -U lxml.

You can check these dependencies by running the script tools/dependency_check.py if you already have a python interpreter installed.

Once all dependencies are installed, you should be able to launch the GUI by running python CoTeTo\scripts\CoTeTo-gui.py

Installation

The framework can be used in different ways:

1. Directly from the source folder: This is the preferred way during development.

2. After installation with pythons standard tools (distutils):

• run python setup.py install in the source folder
• all parts should now be installed on your computer (depending on the operating system)
• this procedure is not fully implemented yet!

3. Using one of the packages that will be available in the future.

Contents

The source folder contains different elements. After installation these elements are stored in different places depending on your system.

Package: CoTeTo

This is the main python module package. It should be installed in your python search path, this is usually done during the installation. This package contains the core functions of CoTeTo.

Package: CoTeTo.Loaders

This is a python module package containing the data loaders. Developers will probably need to edit and amend these modules. If you add new modules, you need to list them in __init__.py.

Folder: Generators

This folder contains the predefined generators. You can copy this to your working environment. CoTeTo can handle a list of folders to search for generators.

Executable Scripts

The scripts give you an interface to CoTeTo on the command line or in a graphical environment. The scripts require the packages CoTeTo and CoTeTo.Loaders. Call the scripts with the --help switch to get some usage information.

Tools

At the moment there's only one tool available. You can call dependency_check.py to check for the required packages in your python installation.