README.rst

Templater

Given some strings, this library extracts templates from that (with the method learn). Then, you can parse other strings and extract only the "movable parts" of them based on the template created (with method parse). You can also pass these "movable parts" to fill the template and have a new string with the same structure as others, but with data (with method join).

And you have flexibility:

• If you don't want/need to Templater create the template for you, you can pass a pre-processed template (as a list with the tokens or as a string with markers).
• You can split the learning and parsing process, since the learning process generally is executed one time and takes a lot of time compared to parsing process. To turn this process handy, Templater has the methods dump, save, load and open, so you can learn and save a template definition and later load and parse how many times you want (you can also load, learn more and save).

Installation

templater is available at PyPI, so installing it is as simple as executing:

pip install templater

Or you can download the latest version, extract and run:

python setup.py build install

Examples

All you need to know is below (and in the examples directory):

>>> from templater import Templater
>>> texts_to_learn = ['<b> spam and eggs </b>', '<b> ham and spam </b>',
                      '<b> white and black </b>']
>>> text_to_parse = texts_to_learn[-1]
>>> template = Templater()
>>> for text in texts_to_learn:
...    template.learn(text)
...

>>> print 'Template created:', template._template
Template created: [None, '<b> ', None, ' and ', None, ' </b>', None]

>>> print 'Parsing last string:', template.parse(text_to_parse)
Parsing last string: ['', 'white', 'black', '']

>>> print 'Filling the blanks:', template.join(['', 'yellow', 'blue', ''])
Filling the blanks: <b> yellow and blue </b>

You can pass pre-processed templates as a list (variable places = None):

>>> t2 = Templater(template=[None, 'Music: ', None, ', Band: ', None])
>>> print t2.join(['', 'Welcome to the Jungle', 'Guns and Roses'])
Music: Welcome to the Jungle, Band: Guns and Roses

...or you can pass a string with the marker, then Templater will create the list for you:

>>> t3 = Templater(template='language=#,cool=#', marker='#')
>>> print t3.join(['', 'Python', 'YES', ''])
language=Python,cool=YES

Saving and opening templates is easy:

>>> template.save('my-first-template.html', marker='|||')
>>> # and some time later...
>>> loaded_template = Templater.open('my-first-template.html', marker='|||')
>>> print loaded_template.parse('<b> Romeo and Juliet </b>')
['', 'Romeo', 'Juliet', '']

The difference between save and dump is that save stores the template string, filling the blanks with a marker and dump saves the whole Templater object with cPickle. The pairs are:

• save and open (raw template string filled with marker)
• load and dump (whole object)

And to not be much literal, you can adjust tolerance too:

>>> str_1 = 'my favorite color is blue'
>>> str_2 = 'my favorite color is violet'
>>> t = Templater() # default tolerance (0)
>>> t.learn(str_1)
>>> t.learn(str_2)
>>> print t._template
[None, 'my favorite color is ', None, 'l', None, 'e', None]
>>> t = Templater(tolerance=1)
>>> t.learn(str_1)
>>> t.learn(str_2)
>>> print t._template
[None, 'my favorite color is ', None]

Author

This software is developed by Álvaro Justen aka Turicas.

Many thanks to Adrian Holovaty - he created templatemaker, the project which templater was inspired in/forked from.

License

GPL version 2