How to have automated headers for python files

Question

A proper header format in python is described here .

Using either VIM or a shell script, I would like to have the usual metadata (like __author__, __authors__, __contact__, __copyright__, __license__, __deprecated__, __date__ and __version__) added to the file header. SVN keywords would also be nice. Adding it to new files is the most relevant. Adding it to existing files is a bonus.

Ruslan's Blog has a solution for Emacs. But I was unable to find a solution for Python.

Where has this been done for python without Emacs? VIM can copy text from one file to another like so , but maybe there is a nicer way.

Answer 1

I highly recommend the snipMate plugin. You can easily add new snips per file type, and they're triggered by just typing a keyword and hitting tab, so for example you could just hit

header<TAB>

and all the fields would be added, and you can easily tab through any that require being filled out on a per-file basis. There is even already a snippet called docs in the built-in python snippets (vimfiles/snippets/python.snippets) that looks like it fills out similar metadata for docstrings which you could easily modify for your purposes, here it is as an example of the snip format:

# Module Docstring
snippet docs
    '''
    File: ${1:`Filename('$1.py', 'foo.py')`}
    Author: ${2:`g:snips_author`}
    Description: ${3}
    '''

Dynamic entries are supported using backticks in your snip (Filename and g:snips_author as the default for tabbable entries 1 and 2 above). The date could be added with:

`system("date +%Y-%m-%d")`

(from the snipMate help doc).