grunt-writefile

Writes static files using handlebars templates.

Getting Started

This plugin requires Grunt ~0.4.2

If you haven't used Grunt before, be sure to check out the Getting Started guide, as it explains how to create a Gruntfile as well as install and use Grunt plugins. Once you're familiar with that process, you may install this plugin with this command:

npm install grunt-writefile --save-dev

Once the plugin has been installed, it may be enabled inside your Gruntfile with this line of JavaScript:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-writefile');

The "writefile" Task

The writefile task is a simple task to create all kind of static files from handlebars templates. You might find this helpful if you want to export files for different environments (e.g. development and production) and need a basic and quick solution.

Options

Property	Type	Description
data	Object/String	The data object passed to the handlebars template. If a string is given, it is interpreted as a path to a JSON file (defaults to undefined).
paths	Object	Creates an array of paths for each given file pattern and adds (or overrides) a paths property to the template data. Each file pattern can either be a string or an object for building paths dynamically (defaults to undefined).
helpers	Object	Custom handlebars helpers, where the key is the helper name and the value is the helper function (defaults to undefined).
preserveExtension	Boolean	This option is only relevant for expanded paths. Will strip the file extension from the destination path when set to false or keep it unchanged when set to true (defaults to false).
encoding	String	The file encoding to write files with (defaults to grunt.file.defaultEncoding).
mode	Boolean/Number	Whether to copy or set the existing file permissions. Set to true to copy the existing file permissions. Or set to the mode (i.e. 0644) that copied files will be set to (defaults to false).

Examples

Basic Options

Basic configuration reading/writing a single file.

grunt.initConfig({
  writefile: {
    options: {
        data: {
            foo: 1,
            bar: 2
        }
    },
    main: {
        src: 'path/to/template.hbs',
        dest: 'path/to/target.txt'
    }
  }
});

Advanced Options

Scans for *.html.hbs files nested inside a template directory and writes the structure to a public directory. As preserveExtension is set to false, the file extension will be dropped when writing. Thereby index.html.hbs will become index.html.

grunt.initConfig({
  writefile: {
    options: {
        preserveExtension: false,
        data: 'path/to/data.json',  // read template data from JSON file
        helpers: {                  // provide handlebars helper functions
            someHelper: function (value) {
                return '<strong>' + value + '</strong>';
            }
        },
        paths: {                    // provide directory contents to template
            someFiles: '/path/to/**/some/files.*',
            otherFiles: {
                cwd: 'path/base/',
                src: '**/other/files.*'
            }
        }
    },
    main: {
        files: [{
            expand: true,
            cwd: 'path/base/',
            src: 'templates/**/*.html.hbs',
            dest: 'public/',
        }]
    }
  }
});

Real-World Example

This example illustrates how to use the plugin for writing files for different environments.

If you use the paths object, you probably want to run the writefile task after all other file manipulating tasks (like less or uglify) to make sure you get the right directory contents.

grunt.initConfig({
    less: {
        dev: { /* ... */ },
        prod: { /* ... */ }
    },
    uglify: {
        dev: { /* ... */ },
        prod: { /* ... */ }
    },
    writefile: {
        options: {
            data: {
                title: 'My Page Title'
            },
            paths: {
                stylesheets: 'assets/styles/*.css',
                scripts: 'assets/scripts/*.js'
            }
        }
        index: {
            src: 'templates/index.html.hbs',
            dest: 'public/index.html'
        }
    }
});
 
// ...
 
grunt.registerTask('dev', ['less:dev', 'uglify:dev', 'writefile:index']);
grunt.registerTask('prod', ['less:prod', 'uglify:prod', 'writefile:index']);
 

The index.html.hbs template file could look like this:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <title>{{title}}</title>
 
        {{#each paths.stylesheets}}
        <link href="{{this}}" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
        {{/each}}
    </head>
    <body>
        <!-- content -->
 
        {{#each paths.scripts}}
        <script src="{{this}}"></script> 
        {{/each}}
    </body>
</html>

Contributing

Thanks to the grunt project, the handlebars template engine and all people that are somehow involved in all that.

Release History

Release	Description
0.1.0	Initial release.
0.1.1	Fixed bug related to preserveExtension option.
0.1.2	Updated library versions.
0.1.3	Updated peer dependencies.
0.1.4	Updated library versions.