Install this package from MELPA with M-x package-install RET yatemplate RET.
This package bridges the gap between YASnippet and
auto-insert-mode. By populating auto-insert-alist with filenames and
automatically expanding their content after insertion by auto-insert-mode, it's
an easy way to create dynamic file templates. Simply call
yatemplate-fill-alist somewhere in your Emacs initialization file to populate
auto-insert-alist with filenames from yatemplate-dir. You may also define
file templates using the usual yasnippet mechanisms.
Of course, you will need to enable auto-insert-mode to have the snippet inserted and expanded into new files.
Each filename will be turned into a new element to push onto
auto-insert-alist. To guarantee a particular order, filenames must contain one
colon (":"). After collecting all the filenames in yatemplate-dir, their names
will be sorted with string<, then split on the colon. The first substring will
be discarded, which means it can be used to establish an ordering. The second
substring will be used as a regexp as the CONDITION of the element to push onto
auto-insert-alist. The ACTION will be a vector of actions that first insert
the content of the template file and then expand the content of the buffer with
yatemplate-expand-yas-buffer, which simply calls yas-expand-snippet, so you
can use everything YASnippet offers in the template.
Note that a dollar sign $ will be added to the end of the regular expression
automatically because most of the template filenames will very likely be of the
form filename.extension. If you want to specify a template filename where the
last letters are not the extension, add .* at the end.
This means that if yatemplate-dir looks like this:
.emacs.d/templates
├── 00:test_.*.py
└── 01:.*.py
yatemplate-fill-alist will first push (".*.py$" . ACTION) onto
auto-insert-alist and then ("test_.*.py$" . ACTION).
You may also define file templates by placing it in a directory defined in yas-snippet-dirs. Add the 'group' snippet directive with 'yatemplate' as part of the group, like so:
# group: yatemplate
or
# group: yatemplate any-other-groups
or use the .yas-make-groups functionality as per YASnippet to set the snippet as part of the yatemplate group.
You may specify the file regexp that will match the file template as in the file-based regexp method above, but without limitation of the filesystem. To do this, simply add the condition snippet directive:
# condition: ".*.el"
The string set as the condition of the snippet will be detected as regexp to use to activate the file template. If you do not specify a condition, the regexps will be determined by the snippet's major modes' auto-mode-alist entries.
Whenever you save your snippet using the usual yasnippet mechanisms, your file templates will load into auto-insert-alist.