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Generators.md

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Generators

A big part of Sails, like any framework, is automating repetitive tasks. Generators are no exception: they're what power the Sails command-line interface any time it generates new files for your Sails projects. In fact, you or someone on your team probably used a generator to create your latest Sails project.

When you type

sails new my-project

sails uses its built-in "new" generator to prompt you for your app template of choice, then spits out the initial folder structure for a Sails app:

my-project
  ├── api/
  │   ├─ controllers/
  │   ├─ helpers/
  │   └─ models/
  ├── assets/
  │   └─ …
  ├── config/
  │   └─ …
  ├── views/
  │   └─ …
  ├── .gitignore
  …
  ├── package.json
  └── README.md

This conventional folder structure is one of the big advantages of using a framework. But it's usually also one of the trade-offs (what if your team or organization has made firm commitments to a different set of conventions?).

Fortunately since Sails v0.11, generators are extensible and easy to check in to a project repository or publish on NPM for re-use.

Sails' generators allow you to completely customize what happens when you run sails new and sails generate from the command-line. By augmenting new apps and newly-generated modules, custom generators can be used to do all sorts of cool things:

  • to standardize conventions and boilerplate logic for all new apps across your organization
  • to swap out rules in the default .eslintrc file
  • to customize how the asset pipeline works in new projects
  • to use a different asset pipeline altogether (like Gulp or webpack)
  • to use a different default view engine
  • to automate custom deployments (e.g. white label apps with one server per customer)
  • to include a different set of dependencies in the package.json file
  • to generate files in a transpiled language like TypeScript or CoffeeScript
  • to start off with all documentation and comments in a language other than English
  • to include ASCII pictures of cats at the top of every code file (or license headers, whatever)
  • to standardize around a particular version of a front-end dependency (for example, sails generate jquery)
  • to include a particular front-end framework in your new Sails apps
  • to make it easy to include new Vue / React components or Angular modules from your favorite templates (for example, sails generate component or sails generate ng-module)

If you are interested in making custom generators, the best place to start is by checking out the introduction to custom generators. You also might check out open-source generators from the community, in case something already out there will save you some time.