Override Templates

+++ title = "Override a built-in generator template" description = "Use cargo loco generate override to copy a built-in .t template into your app so you can customize what generators produce." date = 2021-05-01T18:10:00+00:00 updated = 2021-05-01T18:10:00+00:00 draft = false weight = 61 sort_by = "weight" template = "docs/page.html"

[extra] lead = "" toc = true top = false +++

Goal: change what cargo loco generate <kind> produces — e.g. add a header to every generated controller, or tweak the HTMX scaffold views — without forking Loco.

Every generator kind covered in Using generators is driven by .t template files baked into the loco-gen crate. cargo loco generate override copies one of those templates (or a whole folder of them) into your app's own .loco-templates/ directory; from then on, generation runs read your copy instead of the built-in one.

1. List what's overridable

Run override with no path to see every template, grouped by generator kind:

cargo loco generate override

This prints a tree of all available templates plus example invocations — it ignores --info (a bare invocation always lists).

2. Preview a specific file or folder with --info

Before copying, check what's under a given path (without actually copying anything) by adding --info:

cargo loco generate override scaffold/htmx --info

3. Copy one file, a folder, or everything

# override a single template file
cargo loco generate override scaffold/api/controller.t

# override every template under a folder (e.g. the whole htmx scaffold)
cargo loco generate override scaffold/htmx

# override every template in the project
cargo loco generate override .

Copied files land under .loco-templates/ (mirroring the built-in path, e.g. .loco-templates/scaffold/api/controller.t) and the command prints each file it copied. If nothing matched the given path, it tells you no templates were found instead of silently no-op'ing.

4. Edit your copy

Open the copied .t file under .loco-templates/ and edit it like any other Tera template — it uses the same variables (name, pkg_name, casing filters like snake_case/pascal_case, etc.) as the built-in one you copied it from. The next time you run the matching cargo loco generate <kind> ..., your local copy is used instead of the built-in template.

5. Revert to the built-in template

Delete your local copy — Loco always prefers .loco-templates/ when it exists, and falls back to the built-in template the moment it doesn't:

rm .loco-templates/scaffold/api/controller.t

Verify it

cargo loco generate override scaffold/api/controller.t
# edit .loco-templates/scaffold/api/controller.t
cargo loco generate controller widgets index

Confirm the generated src/controllers/widgets.rs reflects your edited template (e.g. the header/comment you added), not the stock output.

See the Generators & field types reference for the exact override CLI shape, and the CLI reference for how override fits among the other generate subcommands.