A Bash Script for New projects

22^nd August 2013

Whenever I start a new web project, the initial steps are pretty much the same:

Create a new folder, in my case in /var/www
Change the ownership of the new folder
Come up with a new hostname, e.g. myproject.local
Create an entry in etc/hosts
Create an Apache virtual host for it
Create a new database
Create a new Git repository
Intialise the Git repository
Create a new project in Sublime

Not particularly hard, but pretty repetitive. And if something's repetitive, chances are it can be scripted!

So here's what I came up with:

	# CONFIGURATION

	#MYSQL credentials
	MYSQL_USER="root"
	MYSQL_PASS=""

	# The user Apache runs as - e.g. _www, www-data
	APACHE_RUNAS="_www"

	#Bitbucket credentials
	BB_USER="USERNAME"
	BB_PASS="PASSWORD"

	#Hostname TLD - e.g. .local, .dev
	HOSTNAME_TLD=".local"

	#Slugs are generated by replacing spaces with... (e.g. a dash, or underscore)
	space_replace_char='-'

	# CONFIGURATION ENDS

	# Ask the user for a project name
	echo "Please enter the project name:"
	read name

	# Generate a default slug, e.g. a-project-named-something
	default_slug=$(echo "$name" \| tr A-Z a-z )
	default_slug=$(echo "$default_slug" \| tr ' ' "$space_replace_char")

	# Allow the user to override the generated slug
	echo "Enter the slug, or enter to accept the default: "$default_slug

	read slug

	if [ "$slug" = "" ]; then
	slug=$default_slug
	fi

	echo "Using "$slug" as the slug"

	# Assign the variables
	host=$slug".local"

	# Create a project directory
	directory="/var/www/"$slug

	# Generate a database name
	database=$(echo "$name" \| tr A-Z a-z )
	database=$(echo $database \| tr -d ' ')

	echo "Creating directory "$directory

	# Create the directory
	sudo mkdir $directory

	# Change ownership
	sudo chown -R $USER:$APACHE_RUNAS $directory

	echo "Creating virtual host "$host

	# Create the entry in hosts
	echo "127.0.0.1\t\t$host\n" >> /etc/hosts

	# Append the virtual host entry
	echo "<VirtualHost *:80>\nServerName $host\nDocumentRoot $directory\n\n\t<Directory />\n\t\tAllowOverride All\n\t\tRewriteEngine On\n\t\tRewriteBase /\n\t</Directory>\n\n</VirtualHost>" >> /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

	echo "Creating database "$database

	# Create a temporary file to create a database schema
	echo "create database $database;" > temp.sql

	# Create the schema; of course we'll have to stop and ask for the DB password
	if [ "$MYSQL_PASS" = "" ]; then
	mysql -u$MYSQL_USER < temp.sql
	else
	mysql -u$MYSQL_USER -p$MYSQL_PASS < temp.sql
	fi

	# Remove the temporary SQL file
	rm temp.sql

	# Create the git repo
	curl -u$BB_USER:$BB_PASS -X POST https://api.bitbucket.org/1.0/repositories -d "name=$slug" -d 'is_private=1' -d 'scm=git'

	# Change into the new project directory
	cd $directory

	# Run Git init...
	git init

	# ...and point it to Bitbucket
	git remote add origin ssh://git@bitbucket.org/$BB_USER/$slug.git

	# Create the Sublime Project
	echo '{\n\t"folders":\n\t[\n\t\t{\n\t\t\t"path": "'$directory'"\n\t\t}\n\t]\n}' > ~/$name.sublime-project

	echo "Finished."

view raw create-project.sh hosted with ❤ by GitHub

A few notes:

This script is designed for a Mac, but it should work on any OS provided you check / modify things like the paths
Don't forget to set your MySQL / Bitbucket credentials at the top of the file
You'll probably need to use sudo to run this
The script asks for a "friendly" name, e.g. "My Awesome Project". It then generates a slug, e.g. my-awesome-project. The hostname becomes my-awesome-project.local, the directory gets named my-awesome-project, as does the Git repo, and the database ends up being called myawesomeproject. You can always modify the script to alter this behaviour
You might want to expand the script to create a database user too, perhaps with a random password
It creates a Git repository using Bitbucket's REST API. You may wish to alter the behaviour - in which case consult the documentation - or you might be able to add Github support, which isn't something I tried.