gulp-sketch

A SketchTool plugin for gulp.

Install

If you're using Sketch.app ver 3.5 or later, just install gulp-sketch via npm:

$ npm install gulp-sketch --save-dev

Are you new to Sketch.app or the user of ver < 3.5 ? See the section below.

Usage

var gulp   = require('gulp');
var sketch = require('gulp-sketch');
 
gulp.task('sketch', function(){
  return gulp.src('./src/sketch/*.sketch')
    .pipe(sketch({
      export: 'slices',
      formats: 'png'
    }))
    .pipe(gulp.dest('./dist/images/'));
});

or write it in CoffeeScript.

gulp   = require 'gulp'
sketch = require 'gulp-sketch'
 
gulp.task 'sketch', ->
  gulp.src './src/sketch/*.sketch'
  .pipe sketch
    export: 'slices'
    formats: 'png'
  .pipe gulp.dest './dist/images/'

Options

The options are the same as what's supported by SketchTool.

• export: pages,artboards,slices
• formats: png,jpg,pdf,eps,svg
• scales: 1.0,2.0
• items: List of artboard/slice names or ids to export. The default is to export all artboards/slices (optional).
• bounds:
• saveForWeb: Export web-ready images (optional, defaults to NO).
• compact: Export in compact form. Currently only relevant for SVG export. (optional, defaults to NO).
• trimmed: Export images trimmed. (optional, defaults to NO).

Additionally, it has clean option for exporting SVG.

• clean: Remove Sketch namespaces and metadata from SVG (optional, defaults to NO). See clean-sketch.

For debugging purposes, it has verbose option for additional output

• verbose: Enables verbose output and outputs stdout from sketchtool (optional, defaults to false)

Layer Naming

When exporting slices, the name of layer is the key to decide the name of the file exported.

• If you have the layer named yellow and export it with option { format:'png' }, the exported file would be yellow.png.
• If you have the layer named square/yellow and export it with same option, the file would be exported as yellow.png under square/ directory.

Bohemian Coding mentioned about it in their article.

You can give each of your slices their own name, and this is the name that will be used when you save your slice to disk. A neat trick is that you if you include a slash (a '/') it will create subfolders for your first. For example, if you named your slice foo/bar.png, it would first create a folder named 'foo' and then create a image named 'bar.png' in there.

Should include or not include generated files?

Basically not. But sometimes it would be controversial. Because tools like sketchtool depends on the environment. Especially Windows user can't use sketchtool.

• All members in the team use Mac? - Force to install sketchtool. It's free!
• Most of members in the team use Mac? - Force to install sketchtool. Make sketch-related tasks skippable for Windows user.
• Only a designer uses Mac? - Include generated design works and make sketch-related tasks optional.

How to skip a task for Windows user

Check sketchtool exists by npm-which.

var gulp   = require('gulp');
var sketch = require('gulp-sketch');
var gutil  = require('gulp-util')
var which  = require('npm-which')(__dirname);
 
gulp.task('sketch', function(){
  try {
    which.sync('sketchtool');
  } catch(error){
    gutil.log(error); return;
  }
 
  return gulp.src('./src/sketch/*.sketch')
    .pipe(sketch({
      export: 'slices',
      formats: 'png'
    }))
    .pipe(gulp.dest('./dist/images/'));
});

Install SketchTool

After the version 3.5, Sketch.app has started bundling sketchtool. You don't have to install it manually. Only the cases below, install sketchtool by yourself.

I'm a developer and not have a license of Sketch.app

Don't worry, the tool doesn't need a license. Run this command to install:

$ npm run install-sketchtool

I'm a user of the older version of Sketch.app (< ver 3.5)

Download SketchTool and install it to your environment by hand.