grunt-json-bake

Baking multiple json files into one

Getting Started

This plugin requires Grunt ~0.4.5

If you haven't used Grunt before, be sure to check out the Getting Started guide, as it explains how to create a Gruntfile as well as install and use Grunt plugins. Once you're familiar with that process, you may install this plugin with this command:

npm install grunt-json-bake --save-dev

Once the plugin has been installed, it may be enabled inside your Gruntfile with this line of JavaScript:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-json-bake');

The "json_bake" task

Overview

This module allows you to merge multiple JSON files into one. It looks for a certain hooks like so "key": "{{path/to/folder}}". All values are parsed and replaced. If the hook is a path to a JSON file, the hook will be replaced with the JSON file content. If the hook is a path to a another file allowed to be inclued, the hook will be replaced with the file content. If the hook is the path to a folder it will take all the JSON files in this folder and put them into an array.

Includes can be nested. That means any JSON that you include will be recursively parsed a swell. Also folders of JSON files can be nested. When a folder is turned into an array it parses the content of a folder for json files. If it comes upon an folder, this will be turned into an array and recursivly all the content will be travirsed for JSON files/folders.

grunt.initConfig( {
    json_bake: {
 
        your_target: {
            options: {},
 
            // multiple files in a key value pair
            // the key is the destination and
            // the value is the root of the parsable
            files: {
                "dist/final.json": "app/base.json"
            }
        }
    }
} );

Options

options.parsePattern

Type: Regex Default value: /\{\{\s*([\/\.\-\w]*)\s*\}\}/

This Regex is used to parse every value of all key-value-pairs. If the value has a formet like {{path/to/something}} it is resolved and parsed as well. The path is relative to that file and can point to a folder or a file.

options.stripComments

Type: Boolean Default value: false

If this is set to true it will remove every key-value pair that has the key "{{comment}}".

options.indentation

Type: String Default value: "/t"

This defines the amount of indentation of the JSON being generated. Setting this to null will produce a minfied version. To get what NPM uses as a default use two spaces: " ".

options.includeFiles

Type: Object with keys and values. See the default values below.

includeFiles: {
    json: { resultType: "json"},
    html: { resultType: "string", separator: ""  },
    csv: { resultType: "string", separator: ";"  }
}

The keys of includeFiles define the extensions of the files that can be included with {{filename.ext}}. The resultType can have the values json or string. If the resultType is json, then the file is included as a parsed JSON object. If the resultType is string, then the file content is included as a string. If the file content consists of multiple lines you can define the separator to connect the lines.

options.variables

Type: Object with keys and values. Default value: "{}" (empty object).

This is used to define variables that will be replaced by their corresponding values. The variables can be used anywhere in the json file(s), by wrapping the variable name with "@". The variable definition style can be changed with the next setting.

options.variableRegex

Type: Object with keys and values. Default value: /@(\w+)@/g

This Regex is used to parse all string values in the JSON files to swap them for their counterpart in the options.variable object. By default is would look like "some/@foo@/path".

Usage Examples

Recursive Bake including files and folders

Given the following folder structure:

base.json
includes
  | - author.json
  \ - books
        | - 1.json
        | - 2.json
        \ - 3.json

This is the base.json:

{
    "author": "{{includes/author.json}}",
    "books": "{{includes/books}}"
}

With an includes/author.json:

{
    "name": "Mathias Paumgarten",
    "url": "http://www.mathias-paumgarten.com"
}

and three files in includes/books/* like so:

{
    "name": "awesome book",
    "released": "2014"
}

This would generate a new json from base.json:

{
    "author": {
        "name": "Mathias Paumgarten",
        "url": "http://www.mathias-paumgarten.com"
    },
    "books": [
        {
            "name": "awesome book",
            "released": "2014"
        },
        { ... },
        { ... }
    ]
}

"books" will be an array of the content of each of the JSON files in the book folder.

Removing comment lines

Make sure to turn it on in the Gruntfile.js:

grunt.initConfig( {
    json_bake: {
        options: {
            stripComments: true
        },
 
        your_target: {
            "generated.json": "base.json"
        }
    }
} );

In your base.json you can now add comments like so:

{
    "{{comment}}": "This is a list of people",
    "authors": [ "John", "Mike", "Susan" ]
}

This will generate generated.json:

{
    "authors": [ "John", "Mike", "Susan" ]
}

Using variables

Define the targets and variables in Gruntfile.js:

grunt.initConfig( {
    json_bake: {
 
        production: {
            options: {
                variables: {
                    "env" : "production"
                }
            },
            files: {
                "production.json": "base.json"
            }
        },
        dev: {
            options: {
                variables: {
                    "env" : "dev"
                }
            },
            files: {
               "dev.json": "base.json"
            }
        }
    }
} );

In your base.json you can now use the defined variable like so:

{
    "credentials": "{{includes/@env@/credentials.json}}",
}

With an includes/production/credentials.json:

{
    "username": "admin",
    "database": "production_db"
}

and includes/dev/credentials.json:

{
    "username": "admin",
    "database": "dev_db"
}

Running json_bake:dev will generate dev.json:

{
    "credentials": {
        "username": "admin",
        "database": "dev_db"
    }
}

And running json_bake:production will generate production.json:

{
    "credentials": {
        "username": "admin",
        "database": "production_db"
    }
}

Contributing

In lieu of a formal style guide, take care to maintain the existing coding style. Add unit tests for any new or changed functionality. Lint and test your code using Grunt.