minijinja-cli

minijinja-cli is a command line executable that uses MiniJinja to render Jinja2 templates directly from the command line to stdout.

Installation methods

You can install binaries automatically with the shell installer:

curl -sSfL https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/releases/latest/download/minijinja-cli-installer.sh | sh

This script detects what platform you're on and fetches an appropriate archive from GitHub then unpacks the binaries and installs them to the first of the following locations:

• $MINIJINJA_CLI_INSTALL_DIR/bin
• ~/.local/bin

To influence where it installs, you can set the MINIJINJA_CLI_INSTALL_DIR environment variable.

Or download a binary manually:

• aarch64-apple-darwin (Apple Silicon macOS)
• x86_64-apple-darwin (Intel macOS)
• x86_64-pc-windows-msvc (x64 Windows)
• i686-pc-windows-msvc (x86 Windows)
• x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu (x64 Linux, GNU)
• x86_64-unknown-linux-musl (x64 Linux, MUSL)
• i686-unknown-linux-gnu (x86 Linux, GNU)
• i686-unknown-linux-musl (x86 Linux, MUSL)
• aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu (ARM64 Linux, GNU)
• aarch64-unknown-linux-musl (ARM64 Linux, MUSL)

You can also compile it yourself with cargo:

cargo install minijinja-cli

And then run like this:

minijinja-cli my-template.j2 data.json

Unofficial installation methods

You can also install it with Homebrew

brew install minijinja-cli

Arguments and Options

minijinja-cli has two positional arguments to refer to files. Either one of them can be set to - to read from stdin. This is the default for the template, but only one can be set to stdin at once.

• [TEMPLATE_FILE]: the first argument is the filename of the template. If not provided it defaults to - which means it loads the template from stdin.
• [DATA_FILE]: the second argument is the path to the data file. This is a file which holds input variables that should be rendered. Various file formats are supported. When data is read from stdin, --format must be specified as auto detection is based on file extensions.

MiniJinja supports a wide range of options, too long to mention here. For the full help use --long-help or --help for a brief summary.

Formats

The following formats are supported:

• json (*.json, *.json5): JSON5 (or JSON if JSON5 is not compiled in)
• yaml (*.yaml, *.yml): YAML
• toml (*.toml): TOML
• cbor (*.cbor): CBOR
• querystring (*.qs): URL encoded query strings
• ini (*.ini, *.conf, *.config, *.properties): text only INI files

For most formats there is a pretty straightforward mapping into the template context. The only exception to this is currently INI files where sections are effectively mandatory. If keys are placed in the unnamed section, the second is renamed to default. You can use --select to make a section be implied:

minijinja-cli template.j2 input.ini --select default

Note that not all formats support all input types. For instance querystring and INI will only support strings for the most part.

Config File

The config file is in TOML format. By default the file in ~/.minijinja.toml is loaded but an alternative path can be supplied with the --config-file command line argument or the MINIJINJA_CONFIG_FILE environment variable.

To see what the config file looks like, invoke minijinja-cli --print-config which will print out the current loaded config as TOML (including defaults).

Selecting

By default the input file is fed directly as context. You can however also select a sub-portion of this file. For instance if you have a TOML file where all variables are placed in the values section you normally need to reference the values like so:

{{ values.key }}

If you however invoke minijinja-cli with --select=values you can directly reference the keys:

{{ key }}

Examples

Render a template with a string and integer variable:

minijinja-cli template.j2 -D name=World -D count:=3

Render a template string:

minijinja-cli -t "Hello {{ name }}" -D name=World

Render a template with variables from stdin:

echo '{"name": "World"}' | minijinja-cli -f json template.j2 -

Evaluate an expression and print the result:

minijinja-cli --env -E "ENV.HOME or ENV.USERPROFILE"

REPL:

minijinja-cli --repl -D name=World
MiniJinja Expression REPL
Type .help for help. Use .quit or ^D to exit.
>>> name|upper
"WORLD"
>>> range(3)
[0, 1, 2]

Behavior

Templates can extend other templates or include them. Paths are relative to the parent template. So when you are in foo/bar.j2 and you include utils.j2 it will load foo/utils.j2. Including of templates can be disabled for security reasons with --no-include.

All filters and functions from MiniJinja and minijinja-contrib are available.

Upon failure a stack trace is rendered to stderr.

The repl mode lets you execute MiniJinja expressions.

Compile-Time Features

By default all features are enabled. The following features can be explicitly selected when the defaults are turned off:

• yaml: enables YAML support
• toml: enables TOML support (required for --config-file support)
• cbor: enables CBOR support
• json5: enables JSON5 support (instead of JSON)
• querystring: enables querystring support
• ini: enables INI support
• datetime: enables the date and time filters and now() function
• completions: enables the generation of completions
• unicode: enables the unicode identifier support
• contrib: enables the minijinja_contrib based functionality including the --py-compat flag
• preserve_order: enables order preservation for maps

Additionally if the ASSET_OUT_DIR environment variable is set during compilation manpage (and optionally completions) are generated into that folder.

Sponsor

If you like the project and find it useful you can become a sponsor.

License and Links

• Issue Tracker
• License: Apache-2.0