Cookiecutter - choices with a custom entry

Question

I am working with the cookicutter package and I would like to know if there is any way to have something like this:

#cookiecutter.json
{
"name": "default name",
"folder_name": ["foldername1", "foldername2", custom-created-folder-name]
}

So, then when creating the repo, I would pick option 3 and be prompted to enter my own folder_name. I tried looking through the docs, but I could not find any reference to this.

Answer 1

You don't have a really nice way to do this, as you always should show the prompt for a custom folder but you can do something like this:

# cookiecutter.json
{
    "folder_name": ["foldername1", "foldername2", "other"],
    "custom_folder_name": ""
}

# your template folder
{% if not cookiecutter.folder_name == "other" %}{{cookiecutter.folder_name}}{% else %}{{cookiecutter.custom_folder_name}}{% endif %}

Here is what happens:

$ cookiecutter template
Select folder_name:
1 - foldername1
2 - foldername2
3 - other
Choose from 1, 2, 3 (1, 2, 3) [1]: 1
custom_folder_name []: 
$ ls
foldername1  template

$ cookiecutter template
Select folder_name:
1 - foldername1
2 - foldername2
3 - other
Choose from 1, 2, 3 (1, 2, 3) [1]: 3
custom_folder_name []: 
Error: "." directory already exists

$ cookiecutter template
Select folder_name:
1 - foldername1
2 - foldername2
3 - other
Choose from 1, 2, 3 (1, 2, 3) [1]: 3
custom_folder_name []: custom_folder
$ ls
custom_folder  foldername1  template

$ cookiecutter template
Select folder_name:
1 - foldername1
2 - foldername2
3 - other
Choose from 1, 2, 3 (1, 2, 3) [1]: 2
custom_folder_name []: not_used
$ ls
custom_folder  foldername1  foldername2  template