Grunt-anon-tasks NPM

grunt-anon-tasks v0.2.2

What is this?

A plugin for Grunt that allows you to create anonymous tasks using grunt.task.then().

What's an anonymous task?

A task that you can run without ever calling grunt.registerTask() manually. Anonymous tasks are extremely useful for (1) completion callbacks and (2) dynamic task configuration.

Installation

In your terminal:

npm install --save-dev grunt-anon-tasks

In your Gruntfile.js:

grunt.loadNpmTasks("grunt-anon-tasks")

But I suggest using load-grunt-tasks:

require("load-grunt-tasks")(grunt) // loads every installed "grunt-*" module

Example

In the example below, the anonymous task runs after clean completes and before build starts.

grunt.task
  .run("clean")
  .then(function () {
    grunt.log.writeln(this.name)
  })
  .run("build")

The this variable in anonymous tasks is the same as in registered tasks.

Descriptions

Debugging is easier when an anonymous task has a description. Of course, this is optional.

grunt.task.then("A description of what I'm doing", function () {
  // do cool grunty things
})

If provided, the description will appear in your terminal (below the message that says Running "anon_x" task).

Failability

Anonymous tasks can signal failure either synchronously or asynchronously; just like registered tasks.

grunt.task
  .then(function () {
    return false // synchronous failure
  })
  .then(function () {
    var done = this.async()
    performAsyncOperation(function () {
      done(false) // asynchronous failure
    })
  })