pretzel-assets-pipeline

Isomorphic asset pipeline for Pretzel apps, it uses webpack, node-sass and Grunt to compile assets. Check out the example project to see this module in action.

The goals are:

• One simple configuration file across development, staging and production environments
• Fast build times in development and CI environment (with "true" lazy loading for webpack entries).
• Being able to require templates, stylesheets, images or other static files from other modules, on Node.js and in client-side code.

Install

$ npm install --save-dev pretzel-assets-pipeline

pretzel_config.js

Options

path (optional)

• src directory where entries/ and stylesheets/ can be found.
• dest directory where the asset build will go to.
• public prefix that defines what the path scope for assets.

publicFileDirecories (optional)

This will search for public/ directories inside this directories and make all files available in dev server in development and move them to files/ and add digest to filenames in production.

dll (optional)

First level keys define the names of the DLL libs. Second level keys define the modules names that will go into the DLL lib. Second level value defines the path to that lib or the module name.

loaders (optional)

Same as webpack loaders.

plugins (optional)

(default: ['minify', 'manifest']). List of plugins used in webpack.
Available options:

• 'minify' minifies javascript. Ignored on dev server.
• 'manifest' creates javascript manifest file. Ignored on dev server.

dev (optional)

• port (default: 4010) set port for assets dev server.
• noLog (default: true) true will hide compiler logs, but still show errors traces.
• lazy (default: true) true compiles entries on http request, false precompiles all entries to memory on startup.
• sourceMap (default: 'cheap-module-source-map') set type of javascript source maps (Available options).

Example

module.exports = require('pretzel-assets-pipeline')({
  extensions: ['', '.coffee', '.pug', '.js'],
  dll: {
    'vendor': {
      'jquery': path.resolve(__dirname, '../node_modules/jquery/dist/jquery.min.js'),
      'backbone': path.resolve(__dirname, '../node_modules/backbone/backbone-min.js'),
      'underscore': path.resolve(__dirname, '../node_modules/underscore/underscore-min.js')
    },
    'chart_js': {
      'chart.js': path.resolve(__dirname, '../node_modules/chart.js/dist/Chart.min.js'),
    }
  },
  loaders: [
    { test: /\.json$/, loader: 'json' },
    { test: /\.pug$/, loader: 'pug?root=' + path.resolve(__dirname, '../')  },
    { test: /\.coffee$/, loader: 'coffee' },
  ],
  publicFileDirecories: [
    path.resolve(__dirname, '../components'),
    path.resolve(__dirname, '../apps'),
    path.resolve(__dirname, '../node_modules/my_module_a')
  ],
  path: {
    src: path.resolve(__dirname, './'),
    dest: path.resolve(__dirname, '../public/build'), // must match with `public` value!
    public: '/build', // must match with `dest` value!
  }
});

pretzel_server.js example

Use only for development!

require('pretzel-assets-pipeline/lib/server')(require('./pretzel_config.js'));

Gruntfile.js example

var pretzelConfig = require('./assets/pretzel_config.js');
grunt.initConfig({
  // feel free to add your additional tasks here
});
 
grunt.config.merge(pretzelConfig.getGruntConfig());

node-app.js example

var express = require('express');
 
var app = module.exports = express();
 
var assetsPathConfig = require('./assets/pretzel_config.js').getPathConfig();
 
var manifests = {};
if (process.env.NODE_ENV !== 'development') {
  manifests.files = require('./public/build/manifest-files.json');
  manifests.entriesAndDll = require('./public/build/manifest-entries+dll.json');
  manifests.stylesheets = require('./public/build/manifest-stylesheets.json');
}
app.locals.assets = require('pretzel-assets-pipeline/helper/asset-path')(manifests.files, assetsPathConfig);
app.locals.serverAssets = require('pretzel-assets-pipeline/helper/server-asset-path')(manifests.entriesAndDll, manifests.stylesheets, assetsPathConfig);
 
app.use(express.static('./public/'));
 
// …
 

browser-app.js example

It is not possible to have access to serverAssets in browser.

var assetPath = require('pretzel-assets-pipeline/helper/asset-path');
 
window.assets = assetPath(MANIFEST_FILES, {port: 4010});
 
// …
 

template.pug example

html
  head
    link(href=serverAssets.css('test') media="all" rel="stylesheet")
    script(src=serverAssets.dll('vendor'))
    script(src=serverAssets.js('app'))
 
  body
    img(src=assets.image('test.jpg'))
    a(href=assets.file('test.txt'))

Useful scripts

  "scripts": {
    "assets:server:dev": "node ./assets/pretzel_server.js",
    "assets:clean":      "grunt clean:pretzel",
    "assets:build:dll":  "grunt webpack:pretzel-dll",
    "assets:build:all":  "grunt pretzel-build-assets --hashedName=true"
  }

Source directory structure

├── assets/
│   ├── pretzel_config.js
│   ├── pretzel_server.js
│   ├── entries/
│   │   ├── app_a.js
│   │   ├── app_b.js
│   ├── stylesheets/
│   │   ├── style_a.sass
│   │   ├── style_b.sass
├── components/
│   ├── component_a/
│   │   ├── public/
│   │   │   ├── stuff.txt
├── Gruntfile.js

Compiled directory structure

├── public/
│   ├── build/
│   │   ├── manifest-entries+dll.json
│   │   ├── manifest-stylesheets.json
│   │   ├── manifest-files.json
│   │   ├── files/
│   │   │   ├── stuff.DIGEST.txt
│   │   ├── dll/
│   │   │   ├── chart_js.DIGEST.js
│   │   │   ├── chart_js.DIGEST.js.map
│   │   │   ├── chart_js.json
│   │   │   ├── vendor.DIGEST.js
│   │   │   ├── vendor.DIGEST.js.map
│   │   │   ├── vendor.json
│   │   ├── entries/
│   │   │   ├── app_a.DIGEST.js
│   │   │   ├── app_a.DIGEST.js.map
│   │   │   ├── app_b.DIGEST.js
│   │   │   ├── app_b.DIGEST.js.map
│   │   ├── stylesheets/
│   │   │   ├── style_a.DIGEST.css
│   │   │   ├── style_a.DIGEST.css.map
│   │   │   ├── style_b.DIGEST.css
│   │   │   ├── style_b.DIGEST.css.map

What is DLL and why to use it

Read about webpack's DLL in this blog post. This module will make using it even simpler.

Gotchas

pug

• Make sure to set app.locals.basedir = __dirname; in your express app and loader: 'pug?root=' + path.resolve(__dirname, '../') in your pretzel_config.js to be able to use include /node_modules/module_a/template_a.
• You can not have multiple public/ directories or files with the same name.