Getting Started

Install

As usual, you can either install yown globally:

npm i -g yown

Or use npx, no strings attached:

npx yown <gist_id> <gist_id> ...

What is a yown boilerplate ?

A yown is just a Github Gist.

npx yown 3f835915441c2b84890282302ad44d7f

The CLI tool downloads all the files in the Gist into the working directory.

Although specifying any Gist ID does work, there are ways to do smarter downloads:

• Specify folder to download all the files into
• Specify folder to download each file individually into
• .patch existing files

Specify working directory

By default yown will download all the files into the working directory (cwd).

This can be overridden with the --dir option:

npx yown 3f835915441c2b84890282302ad44d7f --dir app/config

All the files in the Gist would be downloaded inside the ./app/config/ folder instead of the working directory ./.

Alternatively you can add a special yown.json file to your Gist, and specify the default dir option in it:

{
    "dir": "app/config"
}

Note

CLI --dir option supersedes yown.json dir option.

Specify folder in file name

Since it is not allowed to write a file path as a Gist file name, yown comes with its own workaround:

Use back slashes (\) instead of forward slashes (/) in file names: app\config\index.js.

The index.js file would be downloaded into the ./app/config/ folder.

Notes

• Yown does not replace a file if git is detected and the file is not clean
• Yown creates all non-existing folders

Patch existing files

In order to download and apply a patch, just append .patch to your Gist file name: app\views\atoms\index.js.patch.

@@ -0 +0 @@
+export { default as Button } from './button';
+

Notes

• Yown uses the unified diff format
• Yown ignores the diff file names header (--- from-file, +++ to-file)
• Yown does not patch a file if git is detected and the file is not clean
• Yown creates all non-existing files to patch

Boilerplate scoped name

While you can download a Gist by ID:

npx yown 3f835915441c2b84890282302ad44d7f

It might be easier to share them with your team with a name:

npx yown @<username>/<name>

You can name a boilerplate at yown.org and it will also come with a file explorer to showcase all the boilerplate files.

Boilerplate is ❤️. Happy coding.