gulp-intermediate2

A gulp helper for tools that need files on disk.

Some tools require access to files on disk instead of working with stdin and stdout (e.g., Jekyll, Ruby Sass). gulp-intermediate2 is a convenience plugin that writes the current vinyl stream to a temporary directory, lets you run commands on the file system, and pushes the results back into the pipe.

NOTE: Writing intermediate files to disk is counter to the gulp philosophy. If possible, use a tool that works with streams. Use gulp-intermediate2 only if other (better) options aren't available.

Install

npm install --save-dev gulp-intermediate2

Usage

var gulp = require('gulp');
var spawn = require('child-process').spawn;
var intermediate = require('gulp-intermediate2');

gulp.task('default', function () {
  return gulp.src('app/**/*.jade')
    .pipe(intermediate({ output: '_site' }, function (tempDir, cb) {
      // Run a command on the files in tempDir and write the results to
      // the specified output directory.
      var command = spawn('a_command', ['--dest', '_site'], {cwd: tempDir});
      command.on('close', cb);
    }))
    .pipe(gulp.dest('dist'));
});

API

intermediate([options], [process])

options

Type: object Optional

output

Type: string Default: '.'

The directory read back into the stream when processing is finished. Relative to tempDir.

container

Type: string Default: random uuid

The directory that files are written to, relative to the operating system's temporary directory. Defaults to a unique random directory on every run.

The container is emptied before every run.

process(tempDir, cb, [fileProps])

Type: function Optional

Run your commands inside the process callback. process comes with three arguments:

• tempDir: The absolute path to the directory containing your temporary files. If using spawn you may want to set the cwd option to tempDir.
• cb: A callback function to call when the processing is finished. It pushes the output files back into the gulp stream.
• fileProps: An object with some information about the files that have been written to the temp directory.
  • fileProps.cwd: The original vinyl CWD.

Notes

The files are written to tempDir using the vinyl file object's relative path, just like gulp.dest() writes to the output directory. Make sure you understand how globbing works to avoid unexpected errors: for example, the files in gulp.src(['files/*.json', config.yml]) will all be output at the root of tempDir.

Consider passing the { base: '.' } option to glob.src if you need to output a src glob as it exists on disk. When in doubt, log tempDir to the console and open it to see what's going on.