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Script Templates

Templates are pre-written scripts in a particular scripting language. They can be distributed as any other plugin, and automatically discovered by the Script Editor. Templates thus present an excellent way to demonstrate a particular operation to a wide audience of users.

Available templates are sorted by language under the Templates menu of the Script Editor. The contents of a template will be loaded into the editor window when selected. The script can then be inspected, executed and modified as normal.

Adding a new template

The Script Editor will automatically search the script_templates directory and register any discovered scripts as templates. For example, a Mavenized project could add a sample script in src/main/resources/script_templates and it would be packaged into the appropriate location of the resultant .jar.

For examples of how the existing templates are structured and distributed, take a look at the imagej-legacy project (which maintains the script templates that were previously shipped with Fiji’s script editor) as well as the imagej-scripting project.

Template best practices

Above all else, templates should be well documented. Templates are intended to explain specific functionality in a given language, to users who may have limited experience with the language or programming/scripting in general.

Ideally, a template will be focused on an a single objective (e.g. opening an image, calculating a threshold, operating on a directory, etc…).

It is especially helpful to document how the template can be adapted to meet the user’s needs.