Understanding Vinyl FS An Extensive Guide with Useful APIs and Examples

Introduction to Vinyl FS

Vinyl FS is a file system adapter for the popular streaming build system, Gulp. It allows you to interact with the file system in a stream-based manner, making your build scripts more efficient and easier to manage.

Here’s an overview of some of its most important APIs with examples to get you started:

1. Source

The src method is used to read files from the file system into a stream.

const vinylFs = require('vinyl-fs');

vinylFs.src('path/to/files/*.js')
  .pipe(/* some Gulp plugin here */)
  .pipe(vinylFs.dest('path/to/destination'));

2. Destination

The dest method is used to write files from a stream back to the file system.

const vinylFs = require('vinyl-fs');

vinylFs.src('path/to/files/*.js')
  .pipe(/* some Gulp plugin here */)
  .pipe(vinylFs.dest('path/to/destination'));

3. Watch

The watch method can be used to monitor changes in files and trigger tasks.

const vinylFs = require('vinyl-fs');

vinylFs.watch('path/to/files/*.js')
  .on('change', function(file) {
    console.log(`File ${file.path} was changed`);
  });

4. Symlink

The symlink method creates symlinks from a stream to a destination.

const vinylFs = require('vinyl-fs');

vinylFs.src('path/to/files/*.js')
  .pipe(vinylFs.symlink('path/to/symlink/destination'));

5. Concat

Concatenating multiple files into one:

const vinylFs = require('vinyl-fs');
const concat = require('gulp-concat');

vinylFs.src(['file1.js', 'file2.js'])
  .pipe(concat('bundle.js'))
  .pipe(vinylFs.dest('dist/'));

App Example

Let’s take a look at a simple Gulp task using vinyl-fs to process JavaScript files:

const gulp = require('gulp');
const vinylFs = require('vinyl-fs');
const uglify = require('gulp-uglify');
const concat = require('gulp-concat');

gulp.task('scripts', function() {
  return vinylFs.src('src/js/**/*.js')
    .pipe(uglify())
    .pipe(concat('app.min.js'))
    .pipe(vinylFs.dest('dist/js'));
});

gulp.task('default', gulp.series('scripts'));

By using the above script, you will minify and concatenate all JavaScript files in the src/js directory into a single file named app.min.js, which will be placed in the dist/js directory.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what you can achieve with vinyl-fs. Happy coding!

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