gulp-create-tasks

Gulp Plugin that automatically creates gulp 4+ tasks and watchers.

about gulp-create-tasks

The motivation behind writing this package is that I noticed I was constantly copying and pasting taskNames and globs throughout my gulpFile.js. I'd have tasks for JS tasks for minified (prod) and unminified (dev) that were nearly the same, but with third party dependencies that were slightly different. Or CSS tasks for front-end and back-end that may only have one or two differences. Then when creating tasks and/or watchers, I might have to change one thing and copy and paste it three or four times in my gulpFile.js. Possibly making a mistake or forgetting to make a change in one spot. This also made the gulpFile.js harder to read and bloated. I could create variables or functions to handle the changes, but that made the gulpFile.js even more unwieldy. So I came up with a format that allows for succinct rules that will create my tasks and watchers for me.

The concept is straightforward. You pass require('gulp-create-tasks') two options: a builds object and an optional options object:

The builds object is a collection of tasks and their corresponding callbacks. The builds object is a list of key-values pairs. The key is the name of the tasks grouping that all share the same callback. The value is an object with a configs key and a cb (callback) key. The configs object is an array of tasks whose information will get passed to the cb callback. The contents of this object is arbitrary, it is solely dependant on what you want to pass to the callback. Typically you might want to pass values for at least src and dest, but it's completely optional. You could just as easily hard code everything in the cb callback, making the contents of the configs array unnecessary. I would not recommend that, but hey It's your code! Also, having an id is nice because it displays that name in the console output, but if left empty it will still work, it just displays undefined. There is also some syntactic sugar which I will discuss below.

The options object is simply global options that get merged into every local configs options that is sent to the cb callback. For example, you may have the same browerlist or babelrc options for multiple tasks. So you set it once in the options and you don't need to copy and paste in each individual task configs. However, you can override these directly in the configs option if you need to. Finally, there are a few package rules that you can also pass in the options, if needed, which I'll discuss below.

Usage

createTasks = require('gulp-create-tasks')

const gulp = require('gulp'),
    createTasks = require('gulp-create-tasks'),
    browsers = ["last 1 version", "> 1%", "maintained node versions", "not dead"];
 
const options = {
    browsers,
    match: {sass: /[.]scss/, min: /(?<!\.min)\.(js|css)$/},
    postcss: [cssnano({preset: 'default'})],
    babelrc: {
        presets: [
            ["@babel/preset-env", {targets: {browsers}}],
            ["@babel/preset-react", {targets: {browsers}}],
        ],
    },
};
 
const builds = {
    css: {
        configs: [{
            id: ['styles', 'editor'],
            src: [['./scss/styles.scss'], ['./scss/editor.scss']],
            dep: ['./node_modules/owl.carousel/dist/assets/owl.carousel.css'],
            dest: './css',
            watch: ['./scss/**/*.scss'],
            post: ['clean'],
        }],
        cb(_, cb) {
            return gulp.src(_.src)
                .pipe(gulpif(_.dep, addsrc.prepend(_.dep)))
                .pipe(gulpif(_.match.sass, gulpif(_.sass, sass(_.sass).on('error', sass.logError))))
                .pipe(concat(_.filename))
                .pipe(gulp.dest(_.dest))
                .pipe(gulpif(!!_.postcss, postcss(_.postcss)))
                .pipe(rename({suffix: '.min'}))
                .pipe(gulp.dest(_.dest));
        },
    },
    js: {
        configs: [{
            id: 'scripts',
            src: './js/src/**/*.js',
            dep: ['./node_modules/owl.carousel/dist/owl.carousel.js'],
            depMin: ['./node_modules/owl.carousel/dist/owl.carousel.min.js'],
            dest: './js/dist',
            watch: true,
            post: ['clean'],
        }],
        cb(_, cb) {
            return gulp.src(_.src)
                .pipe(concat(_.filename))
                .pipe(gulpif(_.babelrc, babel(_.babelrc)))
                .pipe(gulpif(_.dep, addsrc.prepend(_.dep)))
                .pipe(gulpif(_.minify, gulpif(_.match.min, uglify())))
                .pipe(concat(_.filename))
                .pipe(gulpif(_.minify, rename({suffix: '.min'})))
                .pipe(gulp.dest(_.dest));
        }
    },
    clean: {
        configs: [{
            id: 'all',
            debug: {title: 'clean:all'},
        }],
        cb(_, cb) {
            return gulp.src(_.exclude, {base: (_.base || './'), since: gulp.lastRun(_.cb)})
                .pipe(gulpif(_.ceol, ceol(_.ceol)))
                .pipe(gulp.dest((_.dest || './')));
        },
    },
};
 
createTasks(builds, options);

Package config options

• ignoreCommon: false - if you don't want to include the common options defined in the package, set this to true
• taskDelimiter: ' > ' - The console output will combine the build key and the task id with this delimiter for readability. You can also use the same format to reference specific tasks in the pre and post fields. See below.
• WatchName: 'watch' - The name to give the watch task for watching all the watch fields defined
• watchTasks: false - Add watchers to each build key
• createSubTasks: false - Add tasks for ALL tasks rather than simply build grouping
• watchSubTasks: false - Watch ALL tasks, rather than just the build grouping

Other Notes and Syntactic Sugar

• cb receive two arguments, the first is the options object, the second is the gulp cb callback. See https://gulpjs.com/docs/en/api/task for more info on the cb callback in gulp
• in addition to the the current options, the options object also returns a cb field for the current callback, and a cbs field for all task callbacks in an object. This can be useful when calling gulp.lastRun()
• I used _ as the variable name because I think it's easier to read, but if this is confusing, you can replace _ with the variable name options
• if id is an array, then src must be indexed the same way. See css build object above. Basically this means you have two tasks that are identical in every way except in the src field. So rather then repeating code, you can make id and src matching indexed arrays. This is a shorthand usage. You can achieve the same thing with two configs and copying and pasting the common fields between them.
• depMin is similar but for file/glob dependencies. In the example above I wanted to use owl carousel's compressed version for production, but uncompressed for dev. With depMin defined, the task will automatically run twice. One with the original dep, then one with depMin replacing dep. It also creates a minify field set to true the second time around, which you can use with a gulpif in your pipes.
• If you don't have a need for splitting dependency files (min and non-min), but you still want to run the task twice, 1st with minify false, then with minify true, use alsoMin instead of depMin.
• if filename is not set (in the local options), then by default the configs id and the build key will be joined with a period to create the filename. In the example above: css filenames would be styles.css and editor.css, and js filename would be scripts.js (and scripts.min.js for depMin callback)
• pre and post fields are used as pre and post gulp.series callbacks. For example, as shown above, if you want to run all the clean tasks after the current task, then referencing it by name in the post field will run those. You do the same for pre (if needed). You can also isolate a specific task like this {..., post: ['clear > all'], ...}. This will only run the all task under clean.
• if defined, the watch field signals which files to watch for the automated watcher. If left blank or false, no watcher is set. If set to true, then it will use the src field as the watch files