grunt-assemble
Static site generator for Grunt.js, Yeoman and Node.js. Used by Zurb Foundation, Zurb Ink, H5BP/Effeckt, Less.js / lesscss.org, Topcoat, Web Experience Toolkit, and hundreds of other projects to build sites, themes, components, documentation, blogs and gh-pages.
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Warning!
Versions of
grunt-assemble
below0.2.0
have been deprecated and can be found on the0.1.15-deprecated
branch. Versions ofgrunt-assemble
at and above0.2.0
contain the code from the originalassemble
up to version0.4.42
.
See the migration section for instructions on what to do when upgrading to a new version.
Why use Assemble?
- Most popular site generator for Grunt.js and Yeoman. Assemble is used to build hundreds of web projects, ranging in size from a single page to 14,000 pages (that we're aware of!). Let us know if you use Assemble.
- Allows you to carve your HTML up into reusable fragments: partials, includes, sections, snippets... Whatever you prefer to call them, Assemble does that.
- Optionally use
layouts
to wrap your pages with commonly used elements and content. - "Pages" can either be defined as HTML/templates, JSON or YAML, or directly inside the Gruntfile.
- It's awesome. Lol just kidding. But seriously, Assemble... is... awesome! and it's fun to use.
...and of course, we use Assemble to build the project's own documentation http://assemble.io:
For more: hear Jon Schlinkert and Brian Woodward discuss Assemble on Episode 98 of the Javascript Jabber Podcast.
The "assemble" task
Getting Started
Assemble requires Grunt ~0.4.1
If you haven't used grunt before, be sure to check out the Getting Started guide.
From the same directory as your project's Gruntfile and package.json, install Assemble with the following command:
npm install grunt-assemble --save-dev
Once that's done, add this line to your project's Gruntfile:
grunt;
The "assemble" task
Run the "assemble" task with the grunt assemble
command.
Task targets, files and options may be specified according to the grunt Configuring tasks guide.
In your project's Gruntfile, add a section named assemble
to the data object passed into grunt.initConfig()
.
assemble: options: assets: 'assets' plugins: 'permalinks' partials: 'includes/**/*.hbs' layout: 'layouts/default.hbs' data: 'data/*.{json,yml}' site: src: 'docs/*.hbs' dest: './'
Options
See the documentation for Options for more information.
assets
Type: String
Default: undefined
Used with the {{assets}}
variable to resolve the relative path from the dest file to the assets folder.
data
Type: String|Array|Object
Default: src/data
Specify the data to supply to your templates. Data may be formatted in JSON
, YAML
, YAML front matter, or passed directly as an object. Wildcard patterns may also be used.
The filenames of the selected files must not collide with the configuration options key names for the assemble build task. For example, the files must not be called assets.yml
,collections.json
,….
layoutdir
Type: String
Default: undefined
The directory to use as the "cwd" for layouts. When this option is defined, layouts may be defined using only the name of the layout.
layouts
Type: String|Array<String>
Default: undefined
A glob pattern to be used to find layouts. When this option is defined, the layoutdir
option is ignored and layouts specified in templates will be searched for using the specified glob pattern(s).
layout
Type: String
Default: undefined
If set, this defines the layout file to use for the task or target. However, when specifying a layout, unlike Jekyll, Assemble requires a file extension since you are not limited to using a single file type.
layoutext
Type: String
Default: undefined
Specify the extension to use for layouts, enabling layouts in YAML front matter to be defined without an extension:
---layout: default---
partials
Type: String|Array
Default: undefined
Specifies the Handlebars partials files, or paths to the directories of files to be used.
plugins
Type: String|Array
Default: undefined
Name of the npm module to use and/or the path(s) to any custom plugins to use. Wildcard patterns may also be used.
See the docs for plugins.
helpers
Type: String|Array
Default: handlebars-helpers
Name of the npm module to use and/or the path(s) to any custom helpers to use with the current template engine. Wildcard patterns may also be used.
By default, Assemble includes handlebars-helpers as a dependency, so any helpers from that library are already available to be used in your templates.
See the docs for helpers.
ext
Type: String
Default: .html
Specify the file extension for destination files. Example:
marked
Type: Object
Default: Marked.js defaults
Specify the Marked.js options for the {{#markdown}}{{/markdown}}
and {{md ""}}
helpers to use when converting content.
engine
Type: String
Default: Handlebars
Specify the engine to use for compiling templates if you are not using Handlebars.
Also see assemble-swig for compiling Swig Templates.
flatten
Type: Boolean
Default: false
Remove anything after (and including) the first .
in the destination path, then append this value. In other words, when files are generated from different source folders this "flattens" them into the same destination directory. See building the files object dynamically for more information on files
formats.
Visit Assemble's documentation for more information about options.
Usage Examples
Simple example of using data files in both .json
and .yml
format to build Handlebars templates.
assemble: options: data: 'src/data/**/*.{json,yml}' docs: files: 'dist/': 'src/templates/**/*.hbs'
Using multiple targets
assemble: options: assets: 'assets' layoutdir: 'docs/layouts' partials: 'docs/includes/**/*.hbs' data: 'docs/data/**/*.{json,yml}' site: options: layout: 'default.hbs' src: 'templates/site/*.hbs' dest: './' blog: options: layout: 'blog-layout.hbs' src: 'templates/blog/*.hbs' dest: 'articles/' docs: options: layout: 'docs-layout.hbs' src: 'templates/docs/*.hbs' dest: 'docs/'
Visit Assemble's documentation for many more examples and pointers on getting started.
Migrations
0.5.0
and 0.6.0
Breaking changes between versions Version 6 is using assemble-handlebars version 0.4.0
which updates handlebars-helpers to version 0.6.0
. Due to this update, there are some breaking changes with how some helpers are loaded and some missing/added helpers.
The following list contains the breaking changes that we have noticed that may require updates to existing templates.
helpers loaded from package.json
Any helpers declared in dependencies
or devDependencies
and have their name in the keywords
property will no longer be loaded automatically. To load the helpers, just include the package name in the helpers
option for your grunt-assemble
target:
assemble: options: helpers: 'handlebars-helper-eachitems'
new path helpers
Helpers have been added that map to methods on the built-in path
module. Some of these helpers are also properties that grunt-assemble
adds automatically to page
properties. To use the page property, use the this
keyword before the property name. To use the helper, use it like any other helper.
{{this.basename}}{{basename this.path}}
missing helper "inspect"
The "inspect" helper has been removed from handlebars-helpers
. The test fixtures in this project use the "inspect" helper so it has been recreated here.
missing helper "unless_eq"
The "unless_eq" helper has been renamed to "unlessEq".
missing helper "md" or "markdown"
There is a bug in handlebars-helpers@0.6
that causes the md
and markdown
helpers to not be registered correctly. This has been fixed in newer versions of handlebars-helpers
, however those changes have not made it here yet. There is currently a refactor of grunt-assemble
that will include the fix, but for now, use the following work-around:
Create a file and register the helpers manually:
// helpers/markdown.jsmoduleexports { 'use strict'; Handlebars; Handlebars;};
// Gruntfile.jsassemble: options: helpers: './helpers/*.js'
handlebars 4 changed how context depths are handled
assemble-handlebars
is also using a newer version of handlebars that changed how the context depth is handled. Some of the block helpers that would create a new depth, no longer create the depth. This requires changing some templates that use the {{../}}
syntax to reduce the amount of ../
segments used. This can be seen in block helpers that don't modify the context, like {{#if}}{{/if}}
and {{#is}}{{/is}}
.
Contributing
In lieu of a formal styleguide, take care to maintain the existing coding style. Add unit tests for any new or changed functionality, and please re-build the documentation with grunt-verb before submitting a pull request.
Assemble plugins
Here are some related projects you might be interested in from the Assemble core team.
- assemble-middleware-anchors: Assemble middleware for creating anchor tags from generated html.
- assemble-middleware-contextual: Assemble middleware for generating a JSON file containing the context of each page. Basic middleware to help see what's happening in the build.
- assemble-middleware-decompress: Assemble plugin for extracting zip, tar and tar.gz archives.
- assemble-middleware-download: Assemble middleware for downloading files from GitHub.
- assemble-middleware-drafts: Assemble middleware (v0.5.0) for preventing drafts from being rendered.
- assemble-middleware-i18n: Assemble middleware for adding i18n support to projects.
- assemble-middleware-lunr: Assemble middleware for creating a search engine within your static site using lunr.js.
- assemble-middleware-permalinks: Permalinks middleware for Assemble, the static site generator for Grunt.js and Yeoman. This plugin enables powerful and configurable URI replacement patterns, presets, uses Moment.js for parsing dates, and much more.
- assemble-middleware-rss: Assemble middleware for creating RSS feeds with Assemble. (NOT published yet!)
- assemble-middleware-sitemap: Assemble middleware for generating sitemaps.
- assemble-middleware-toc: Assemble middleware for creating a table of contents in the generated HTML, using Cheerio.js
- assemble-middleware-wordcount: Assemble middleware for displaying a word-count, and estimated reading time on blog posts or pages.
Visit assemble.io/assemble-middleware for more information about Assemble middleware.
Authors
Jon Schlinkert
Brian Woodward
Release History
DATE VERSION CHANGES
- 2014-07-07 v0.4.41 Updating resolve-dep dependency.
- 2014-06-13 v0.4.38 Use gray-matter instead of assemble-yaml.,Updates dependencies. Minor
refactoring and new utils to get rid of a couple of dependencies.,Update
the loaders for plugins and helpers to use resolve-dep. Should be more
reliable now. - 2013-10-25 v0.4.17 Adds a params object to the call to
helper.register
allowing grunt and
assemble to be passed in and used from inside helpers. - 2013-10-24 v0.4.16 Adds support for using wildcards with plugins stages.
- 2013-10-24 v0.4.15 Implements multiple plugin stages.
- 2013-10-21 v0.4.14 Adds support for plugins running once, before and after (thanks
@adjohnson916).,Adds pagination!,Thanks to @xzyfer,options.data
can now also directly accept an object of data. - 2013-10-12 v0.4.13 Adds
originalAssets
property to root context to store the pre-calculated assets path - 2013-10-05 v0.4.12 Fixes plugins resolving for devDependencies.
- 2013-10-03 v0.4.11 Adds filePair to page object. thanks @adjohnson916!
- 2013-10-02 v0.4.10 Adds plugin support to Assemble using the
plugins
option. thanks
@adjohnson916! - 2013-10-02 v0.4.9 Adds
layoutext
andpostprocess
options. - 2013-09-30 v0.4.8 Assemble now builds 30-50% faster due to some refactoring to async and how context is calculated.
- 2013-09-20 v0.4.7 Adds grunt-readme to make it easier to keep the readme updated using
templates.,Keep options.partials intact so they can be used in helpers. - 2013-09-15 v0.4.6 Updating how the assets path is calculated.,Adding resolve-dep and ability to load helpers from node modules using minimatch patterns
- 2013-09-03 v0.4.5 Bug fix: allow page content containing $.,Add alias metadata for data on
pages configuration object. - 2013-08-01 v0.4.4 Adds "nested layouts",Adds option for pages in JSON/YAML collections to be defined as either objects or keys in an array.
- 2013-08-01 v0.4.3 Adds "options.pages" for passing in an array of pages in JSON or YAML
format. - 2013-06-20 v0.4.0 Adds "layoutdir" option for defining the directory to be used for layouts. If layoutdir is defined, then layouts may be defined using only the name of the layout.
- 2013-06-10 v0.3.81 Adds additional ways to load custom helpers. Now it's possible to use a
glob pattern that points to a list of scripts with helpers to load.,Adds
examples and tests on how to use the new custom helper loading methods. - 2013-06-01 v0.3.80 Fixing bug with null value in engine
- 2013-05-07 v0.3.77 Updated README with info about assemble methods
- 2013-04-28 v0.3.74 Updating the assemble library to use the assemble-utils repo and
unnecessary code. - 2013-04-21 v0.3.73 Fixing how the relative path helper worked and showing an example in the
footer of the layout. This example is hidden, but can be seen by doing view source. - 2013-04-20 v0.3.72 Fixing the layout override issue happening in the page yaml headers.
Something was missed during refactoring. - 2013-04-19 v0.3.9 Adds tags and categories to the root context and ensure that the current
page context values don't override the root context values. - 2013-04-18 v0.3.8 Updating to use actual assets property from current page.
- 2013-04-17 v0.3.7 Cleaning up some unused folders and tests
- 2013-04-16 v0.3.6 Fixed missing assets property.
- 2013-04-16 v0.3.5 Adds a sections array to the template engine so it can be used in helpers.
- 2013-04-11 v0.3.4 More tests for helpers and global variables, organized tests. A number of
bug fixes. - 2013-04-06 v0.3.3 helper-lib properly externalized and wired up. Global variables for
filename, ext and pages - 2013-03-22 v0.3.22 Merged global and target level options so data and partial files can be
joined - 2013-03-22 v0.3.21 Valid YAML now allowed in options.data object (along with JSON)
- 2013-03-18 v0.3.14 new relative helper for resolving relative paths
License
Copyright (c) 2017 Jon Schlinkert, Brian Woodward, contributors.
Released under the MIT license
This file was generated by grunt-verb on March 17, 2017.