Using templates

Several Buffy responders can reply with a template. Please read each Responder documentation to know if a specific Responder allows this option.

Template files

Templates must be created in the repository using Buffy. Every template is a different file in the repo. To make use of them Buffy needs to know where the templates are located, and the individual name of each template file. As the comments in GitHub issues are rendered using markdown, usually the templates will be plain text or .md files, but that is not mandatory for Buffy to use them.

Location

Buffy will look for the templates in the target repository. By default it will look under the .buffy/templates dir. This value can be modified in the settings file with the templates_path setting. If present, the value of this setting will be considered the relative value in the target repo where templates are located.

Name

In the responders allowing templates for replies, the template is specified using the template_file setting for that responder. Value should be the name of the file including the extension if it has one.

Example

If Buffy is configured to work on a repo with address https://github.com/scientific-journal/astronomy and the settings.yml file has the following value for template_path:

buffy:
  templates_path: .templates
...

and you declare a template in a responder using template_file with this value:

...
responders:
  welcome_template:
    template_file: welcome.md
...

Buffy will use the content of https://github.com/scientific-journal/astronomy/.templates/welcome.md to respond.

Populating templates

The content of a template can include placeholders to be filled with the actual values of a variable. The syntax is:

{{variable_name}}

When rendering a template, Buffy will use a hash of key:value pairs. When a placeholder is found in the template, it will look up for the corresponding key in the hash and insert the value in the template. The hash will always include at least:

• issue_id: The id of the issue

• issue_author: The handle of the user that opened the issue

• issue_title: The title of the issue

• repo: the name of the repository

• sender: the handle of the user creating the comment/issue triggering the responder

• bot_name: the name of the bot user responding

The hash can also include fields extracted from the body of the issue. To add fields use the data_from_issue setting. For example, to have the target-repository and author values from the issue available in the template this would do:

...
responders:
  welcome_template:
    template_file: welcome.md
    data_from_issue:
        - target-repository
        - author
...

Check each responder documentation for details on other values available to use in templates.