grunt-template-functions

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This is not done. The basic mechanism works, but I have to implement getters such that when templates refer to each other recursively, they are recursively resolved. See test/Gruntfile.js.

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The first time I looked at Grunt template strings, I was a bit appalled, because, you know, JavaScript is functional, right? Shouldn't we be able to use real functions there?

The difficult bit, though, is that these functions can reference properties that haven't been instantiated yet. Also, they can reference each other, recursively, and so they have to be evaluated that way, too.

This implementation was inspired by this gist.

The main change is that instead of defining a template like this:

dest: 'dist-<%= version %>'

You'd define it like this:

dest: t(()=> 'dist-' + c.version)

That doesn't look like an improvement, I know! But, that's the most trivial case, and, because it's JavaScript, you can write any code you want, and return any kind of object.

Here's what a complete Gruntfile would look like:

var process = require('process');
var templateFuncs = require('grunt-template-functions');

module.exports = templateFuncs(function(grunt, t, c) {

  var defaultConfig = {
    version: '1.1.1',

    copy: {
      main: {
        src: '*.js',
        dest: t(()=> `dist-${c.version}`),
      }
    }
  };

  // Resolve all the template functions:
  templateFuncs.resolve(defaultConfig);

  // The final config data is in `c`:
  grunt.initConfig(c);

  grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-contrib-copy');
  grunt.registerTask('default', ['copy']);

});