Gulp-plate

Gulp boilerplate & build system.

Includes the following tools, tasks, and work-flows:

• Webpack as JavaScript module bundler
• webpack-dev-middleware for live reloading (in memory compilation for faster rebuilds while developing)
• ES2015 syntax transpiled with Babel
• ESLint for JavaScript linting
• Prettier for JavaScript code formatting
• SASS compiled with libsass, source maps, autoprefixer and Sass linting
• BrowserSync for live reloading and static server
• svgo for SVG compression.
• gulp-svg-symbols to generate a SVG icon sprite with <symbol> & <use> tags

Looking for the SilverStripe version? Look here.

Dependencies / Installation

Gulp-plate depends on the following technologies:

• node.js as local host environment for gulp (v. 7.5.0 or higher) [1]
• gulp as task-runner
• yarn as dependency manager

[1] It is recommended to install node trough nvm (Node Version Manager).

To get started:

$ git clone https://github.com/arillo/gulp-plate myProject
$ cd myProject
$ rm -r .git    # Remove the link to the git repo
$ yarn          # Install dependencies

Commands

# Equivalent
$ yarn run build

Run the default task and generate a dev version of the site in the dist folder.

# Equivalent
$ yarn start
$ yarn run watch

Run the default task once, start a server and watch for file changes.

# Equivalent
$ yarn run prod

Set NODE_ENV='production' and generate a production version of the site by compressing js, css & html. This is the folder that should go on the server.

If you want to run any other gulp task just append the task name to the build /gulp command:

# Equivalent
$ yarn run build sprite
$ yarn run b sprite
$ yarn run gulp sprite
$ yarn run g sprite

Important:

The dist directory will be deleted every time you run build / watch / prod. Don't make any changes in the dist directory.

Folder structure

myProject/
  gulpfile.js/  # gulp tasks
  src/
    icons/      # SVG files to be included in he the sprite
    images/     # other images
    js/         # js code
    sass/       # Sass code, SCSS and Sass indented syntax possible
    html/       # html templates
      data/     # data in json format
      layouts/  # reusable layout templates
      macros/   # Nunjucks macros
      shared/   # reusable snippets

Configuration

All paths and plugin settings have been abstracted into a centralized file: ./gulpfile.js/config.js. Adapt the paths and settings to the structure and needs of your project.

SVG Sprite configuration

The sprite creates an image with the name sprite.svg in ./dist/images/. It also creates a Sass file named: _sprite.scss in ./src/sass/base/.

The generated Sass files contains useful information about the sprite icons like the dimensions of each icon. The file will change every time an icon is added, removed or changed, do not edit it manually. You can change the file by changing the template in ./gulpfile.js/tpl/_sprite.scss.

Static assets

To move static assets from the source directory without transformations, e.g. font files. Add the src and dest paths to the static array in the config.js

HTML Templates

Templates use Nunjucks. See the docs for more information on how to use them.

Sass

Sass indented syntax is used by default. The main Sass files need to have a .sass extension, otherwise the compiler fails. Partials can be both .sass and .scss.

Include external vendor css files

To include third-party styles in your css use include them in the main.sass file:

// main.sass

@import url('../../node_modules/normalize.css/normalize.css');

A postcss plugin will then inline the files preserving the source-maps. After the Sass compilation.

Beware that Sass will move @import url(...) statements to the top of the generated CSS file, so independently of the place of inclusion these styles will always be included at the top of the file.

Sass-lint errors

At the time of writing sass-lint fails when it encounters empty selectors. This is a bug, it can be prevented by adding a indented comment // after the empty selector:

.mySelector
  //

.mySelector_child
  text-align: center

JavaScript

The ./gulpfile.js/config.js file contains the full webpack configuration (see the js variable). Feel free to alter is as needed. Keep in mind that the babel-loader should always be present as eslint will rely on it.

There configuration will be slightly altered depending on the task you are running. When using the watch task, Javascript compilation will happen in memory, so no files are written to disk (./dist/js/ will be empty) and webpack-hot-middleware/client will be injected in all bundles for live reloading to work. When building for production webpack.optimize.UglifyJsPlugin is used for minification. Take a look at ./gulpfile.js/util/getWebpackConfig.js to see exactly what is happening and change it as needed.

Here are some useful recipes to get you up and running:

Declare aliases for frequently required files

// gulpfile.js/config.js

const js = {
  resolve: {
    extensions: ['.js'],
    alias: {
      // Path relative to `context`
      myModule: './myModule/myModule.js',
    },
  },
};

// src/js/some-file.js

import myModule from 'myModule';

myModule();

Docs: https://webpack.js.org/configuration/resolve/#resolve-alias

Shimming non CommonJs modules

jQuery plugin

// gulpfile.js/config.js

const webpack = require('webpack');
//...
const js = {
  plugins: [
    // Make jQuery global, expected by the plugin.
    new webpack.ProvidePlugin({
      'window.jQuery': 'jquery',
    }),
  ],
  //...
  resolve: {
    // Add extensions to prevent linting errors.
    extensions: ['.js', '.json'],
    // Path from `node_modules`, where `myModule` is the module name.
    alias: {
      myModule: 'myModule/dist/myModule.js',
    },
  },
};

// src/js/main.js

import $ from 'jquery';
import 'myModule';

$('.js-selector').myModule();

Regular JavaScript module

// gulpfile.js/config.js

const js = {
  //...
  resolve: {
    // Add extensions to prevent linting errors.
    extensions: ['.js', '.json'],
    // Path from `node_modules`, where `myModule` is the module name.
    alias: {
      myModule: 'myModule/dist/myModule.js',
    },
  },
  module: {
    rules: [
      // ...
      {
        include: require.resolve('myModule/dist/myModule.js'),
        loader: 'exports-loader?MyModule',
      },
    ],
  },
};

// src/js/main.js

import $ from 'jquery';
import MyModule from 'myModule';

const myInstance = new MyModule();

Docs: https://webpack.js.org/guides/shimming/

Multiple JavaScript bundles & vendor code sharing

To create multiple bundles add entires to entry

// gulpfile.js/config.js

const js = {
  // ...
  entry: {
    main: ['./main.js'],
    other: ['./someFile.js', './sotherOtherFile.js'],
  },
  // ...
};

This will generate two bundles: main.js & other.js.

If you do this it is probably a good idea to generate another bundle that contains all shared vendor code:

// gulpfile.js/config.js

const webpack = require('webpack');
//...
const js = {
  // ...
  entry: {
    main: ['./main.js'],
    other: ['./someFile.js', './sotherOtherFile.js'],
    // List vendor modules here:
    vendor: ['jquery', 'svg4everybody'],
  },
  // ...
  plugins: [
    new webpack.optimize.CommonsChunkPlugin({
      name: 'vendor', // Specify the common bundle's name
    }),
  ],
  // ...
};

Docs: https://webpack.js.org/guides/code-splitting-libraries/

Roadmap

• Research Tree-shaking with webpack and implement if possible

Credits

Gulp-plate is based on https://github.com/greypants/gulp-starter