gulp-tasker

Task loading and task registration for Gulp 3.x

Introduction

The idea behind gulp-tasker is that you are able to create independent, small sub-tasks. These sub-tasks each have their own dependencies and target tasks. Previously you would create a gulpfile which would end up containing a couple of hundred lines of code when you have a significant number of tasks.

With gulp-tasker, each task (or bundle of related tasks for that matter) can be specified in a task folder. Each task folder would then contain .js file(s) that specify the tasks to be loaded. Also, you can register sub-tasks to 'global' tasks, such as the 'default' or 'watch' tasks.

Installation

Install with npm:

npm install gulp-tasker

Usage

In your gulpfile.js, first expose gulp-tasker globally so gulp-tasker is also available in the scope of your sub-tasks:

global.tasker = require('gulp-tasker');

Task loading

Then, to load tasks from a folder, run the tasker.loadTasks(options) command:

tasker.loadTasks({
    path: 'tasks',
    recurse: true
});

This loads the tasks recursively from the /tasks/ folder from the root of your project.

Task registration

To register your sub-tasks to another task like the default task, use the tasker.addTask(options) method:

tasker.addTask('default', 'js');
tasker.addTask('deploy', 'js');

To load these tasks from your gulpfile.js, add a tasker.getTasks(name) in the place where you would specify the task dependencies:

gulp.task('default', tasker.getTasks('default').tasks);

This gets all the default tasks from the tasker plugin and returns the task list as an array as needed for gulp.

Watch tasks

When specifying watch tasks, add a third argument to specify the folder to watch:

tasker.addTask('watch', 'js', ['assets/js');

Watch tasks are a bit different than regular tasks, as watch tasks also need a specified folder to watch. To load the watch tasks from gulp-tasker, add the tasks like this:

gulp.task('watch', function () {
    tasker.getTasks('watch').tasks.forEach(function(task) {
        gulp.watch(task.folders, task.tasks);
    });
});

Watch tasks are an object of two properties, the task name and the folder to watch. Using forEach() you can iterate over the watch task array and register each task with the gulp.watch() method.

API

method	description
tasker.loadTasks(options)	Load all tasks from a folder options (Object): options object containing path and recurse options. options.path (String, default 'gulp-tasks'): path to load tasks from options.recurse (Boolean, default true): Whether to recursively load all folders within the specified path
tasker.addTask(type, task, folder)	Register a task to a different task. Optional: specify a folder to register the task as a watch task type (String): task to register new task to task (String|Array): task to register folder (String|Array, optional): folder to watch for changes
tasker.getTasks(type)	Get all tasks of a type type (String): Task type to get from gulp-tasker. Corresponds with type specified via addTask()

License

Copyright (C) 2014 Iain van der Wiel Licensed under the MIT license.