An Introduction to JavaScript Automation with Gulp
Published on 10 April 17
Michelle0
As web developers, we sometimes find ourselves repeating the same tedious tasks again and again. If you consider how much time is wasted by running a build command or hitting refresh on your browser, you will realize that you can be saving a lot of time. Additionally, by automating your processes, you can stay focused on the task at hand instead of temporarily leaving the zone (your state of productivity).
In this JavaScript automation tutorial, you will learn how to automate your design and development process with Gulp. If you are more design-oriented, I encourage you to overcome any fears you have and to read on. On the other hand, if you are a developer you will be able to sweep right through this once you understand the logic behind it.
Gulp is a build system that employs Node.js’s streams to implement an asynchronous source-destination approach to automation. Everything is written in JavaScript, so it is easy for anyone with intermediate coding knowledge to get started. A Gulp build process consists of a collection of watchers and tasks. Additionally, the community behind Gulp maintains a huge plugin directory within npm which helps accomplish any task from concatenating JavaScript to creating icon fonts from SVGs.
Alternatives to Gulp
There are plenty of alternatives out there, most of which have spawned in the past couple of years - the most notable one being Grunt. The contest between Gulp and Grunt will never have a clear winner, since they both have their pros and cons, hence I will avoid delving deep into that. In a nutshell, Grunt’s heavy reliance on config is what steers people towards Gulp’s JavaScript approach. In the meantime, native GUI implementations such as Koala have gained some ground, mostly from people that withhold getting into coding. However, with the bundled applications it’s impossible to reach the level of customizability and extendability that Gulp offers.
Process Automation Alternatives
Plugins
Globs are wildcard patterns that refer to files. Globs or arrays of globs are used as inputs in task source.
Plugins are the means through which gulp accomplishes each process. Plugins are installed through npm and initiated using require.
Tasks
For Gulp, tasks always have a source and a destination. In between them lie the pipes that call each plugin and output the transmuted results to the next pipe.
Globs
Watchers
The watchers watch the source files for changes and call tasks whenever a change is detected.
gulpfile.js
This is the JavaScript file that the gulp command points at. It contains everything from the tasks to the watchers or other pieces of code used by tasks.
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A Straightforward Task
Code Walkthrough
To further improve this process automation implementation, you may try to include a few other Gulp plugins. For instance, you may want to minify the final product of your task using gulp-minify-css and automatically add vendor prefixes with gulp-autoprefixer .
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Employing a Watcher
I have created a watcher starter kit that you can use straight away. You can download it from
gulp 4
Code Walkthrough
We have set up a watcher for our task with only 3 extra lines of code. That said, the watcher starter kit does not differ much from the introductory example. In this section, we will go through all the additions and alterations.
return gulp.src(['scss/**/*.scss', '!scss/**/_*']) In this example, Gulp source is provided with an array of globs. The first one includes all the files that end in .scss also in subfolders, and the second one excludes the ones that start with _. This way we can use SCSS’s built-in function @import to concatenate the _page.
gulp.task('default', ['scss'], function() { Here we define the default task. The
gulp.watch('scss/**/*.scss', ['scss']); 3
Now you are ready to create new watchers for other automated processes such as JavaScript concatenation, code hinting, CoffeeScript compilation, or anything that else that might come in mind. To delve deeper into this JavaScript automation implementation, I propose adding gulp-notify which will notify you when a task is run. Also, you can create a separate task to minify the resulting CSS code and make the scss task run as a dependency to that. Finally, you can use gulp-rename to add the .min suffix to the resulting files.
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Advanced Gulp Plugins for JavaScript Automation
There exist thousands of plugins in Gulp’s plugin base, some of which go far beyond simple JavaScript automation of a build process. Here are a few outstanding examples:
Browser Sync
BrowserSync injects CSS, JavaScript and automatically refreshes the browser whenever a change is made. Additionally, it contains a ghostMode feature which can be used to scare your colleagues or to greatly speed up your browser testing.
Browserify
Browserify analyzes the require calls in your application and converts it to a bundled JavaScript file. Also, there is a list of npm packages that can be converted into browser code.
Webpack
Similar to Browserify, Webpack aims to convert modules with dependencies to static files. This one gives more freedom to the user as to how the module dependencies will be set, and does not aim to follow Node.js’s code style.
Karma
Gulp-karma brings the infamous testing environment to Gulp. Karma follows the least configuration approach that Gulp also endorses.
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Conclusion
In this process automation
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https://www.toptal.com/nodejs/an-introduction-to-automation-with-gulp
Developers often want to automate certain repetitive and tedious tasks to save time as well as to stay focused on the task at hand. In this article, Toptal engineer Antonios Minas demonstrates the beauty and simplicity of using Gulp and JavaScript automation.
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