generate

Fast, composable, highly extendable project generator with a user-friendly and expressive API.

You might also be interested in verb.

TOC

• Install
• What is generate?
  • Feature Highlights
• Usage
• Quickstart
• API
  • Generate
  • .ask
• Related projects
• Contributing
• Building docs
• Running tests
• Author
• License

(TOC generated by verb using markdown-toc)

Install

Install globally with npm

$ npm install -g generate

What is generate?

Generate is a fast, highly pluggable project generator, with a user-friendly CLI and an expressive API, and can be used as an alternative to Google's yeoman.

Feature Highlights

• Built on assemble-core, so all methods from base, assemble, and templates are exposed on generate's API.
• Supports gulp and assemble plugins
• Runs local or globally-installed generators
• Runs sub-generators using simple dot-notation. Supports any level of nesting!
• Runs gulp-style "tasks" and uses some of the same underlying libraries as gulp
• Generators can extend and use other generators
• Generators, sub-generators and tasks can be run by command line, API, or both.
• Runs tasks from any generator or sub-generator, programmatically or via CLI
• Easy to add functionality and features to generate using via plugins
• Supports any node.js template engine, including consolidate
• First class support for template collections, including pagination, sorting, groups, and more.
• Supports middleware that can be run on specific files or template collections, at specific points during the build cycle, such as onLoad, preRender, postRender, etc.

Generate is also well-tested, with close to 1200 unit tests.

Usage

var Generate = require('generate');
var generator = new Generate();

generator.register('one', function(app) {
  app.task('default', function(cb) {
    // do stuff
    cb();
  });
});

generator.register('two', function(app) {
  app.task('default', function(cb) {
    // do stuff
    cb();
  });

  app.task('foo', function(cb) {
    // do stuff
    cb();
  });

  app.task('bar', function(cb) {
    // do stuff
    cb();
  });

  // register another generator as a sub-generator
  app.register('one');

  // register a custom sub-generator
  app.register('qux', function(qux) {
    app.task('default', function(cb) {
      // do stuff
      cb();
    });
  });
});

// run the `default` task on generator `one`
generator.generate('one', function(err) {
  if (err) throw err;
});

// run the `bar` task on generator `two`
generator.generate('two', 'bar', function(err) {
  if (err) throw err;
});

// run the `one` sub-generator in generator "two"
// (sub-generators can be infinitely nested!)
generator.generate('two.one', function(err) {
  if (err) throw err;
});

Quickstart

1. generator.js

Create a generator.js file, and add the following code:

module.exports = function(app) {
  app.task('default', function(cb) {
    console.log('task > default');
    cb();
  });

  app.task('foo', function(cb) {
    console.log('task > foo');
    cb();
  });
};

2. Run gen

In the command line run:

• gen to execute the default task
• gen foo to execute the foo task

API

Generate

Create an instance of Generate with the given options

Params

• options {Object}: Settings to initialize with.

Example

var Generate = require('generate');
var generate = new Generate();

.ask

Async helper that prompts the user and populates a template with the answer.

Params

• app {Object}
• returns {Function}: Returns the helper function

Example

<%= ask('author.name') %>

Related projects

You might also be interested in these projects:

• assemble: Assemble is a powerful, extendable and easy to use static site generator for node.js. Used… more | homepage
• base: base is the foundation for creating modular, unit testable and highly pluggable node.js applications, starting… more | homepage
• update: Easily keep anything in your project up-to-date by installing the updaters you want to use… more | homepage
• verb: Documentation generator for GitHub projects. Verb is extremely powerful, easy to use, and is used… more | homepage

Contributing

Pull requests and stars are always welcome. For bugs and feature requests, please create an issue.

Building docs

Generate readme and API documentation with verb:

$ npm install verb && npm run docs

Or, if verb is installed globally:

$ verb

Running tests

Install dev dependencies:

$ npm install -d && npm test

Author

Jon Schlinkert

• github/jonschlinkert
• twitter/jonschlinkert

License

Copyright © 2016, Jon Schlinkert. Released under the MIT license.

This file was generated by verb, v0.9.0, on April 26, 2016.