gulp-load-plugins

Loads gulp plugins from package dependencies and attaches them to an object of your choice.

Install

$ npm install --save-dev gulp-load-plugins

Usage

Given a package.json file that has some dependencies within:

{
    "dependencies": {
        "gulp-jshint": "*",
        "gulp-concat": "*"
    }
}

Adding this into your Gulpfile.js:

var gulp = require('gulp');
var gulpLoadPlugins = require('gulp-load-plugins');
var plugins = gulpLoadPlugins();

Or, even shorter:

var plugins = require('gulp-load-plugins')();

Will result in the following happening (roughly, plugins are lazy loaded but in practice you won't notice any difference):

plugins.jshint = require('gulp-jshint');
plugins.concat = require('gulp-concat');

You can then use the plugins just like you would if you'd manually required them, but referring to them as plugins.name(), rather than just name().

This frees you up from having to manually require each gulp plugin.

Options

You can pass in an object of options that are shown below: (the values for the keys are the defaults):

gulpLoadPlugins({
    DEBUG: false, // when set to true, the plugin will log info to console. Useful for bug reporting and issue debugging
    pattern: ['gulp-*', 'gulp.*', '@*/gulp{-,.}*'], // the glob(s) to search for
    overridePattern: true, // When true, overrides the built-in patterns. Otherwise, extends built-in patterns matcher list.
    config: 'package.json', // where to find the plugins, by default searched up from process.cwd()
    scope: ['dependencies', 'devDependencies', 'peerDependencies'], // which keys in the config to look within
    replaceString: /^gulp(-|\.)/, // what to remove from the name of the module when adding it to the context
    camelize: true, // if true, transforms hyphenated plugins names to camel case
    lazy: true, // whether the plugins should be lazy loaded on demand
    rename: {}, // a mapping of plugins to rename
    renameFn: function (name) { ... }, // a function to handle the renaming of plugins (the default works)
    postRequireTransforms: {}, // see documentation below
    maintainScope: true // toggles loading all npm scopes like non-scoped packages
});

Multiple config locations

While it's possile to grab plugins from another location, often times you may want to extend from another package that enables you to keep your own package.json free from duplicates, but still add in your own plugins that are needed for your project. Since the config option accepts an object, you can merge together multiple locations using the lodash.merge package:

var merge = require('lodash.merge');

var packages = merge(
  require('dep/package.json'),
  require('./package.json')
);

// Utilities
var $ = gulpLoadPlugins({
  config: packages
});

postRequireTransforms (1.3+ only)

This enables you to transform the plugin after it has been required by gulp-load-plugins.

For example, one particular plugin (let's say, gulp-foo), might need you to call a function to configure it before it is used. So you would end up with:

var $ = require('gulp-load-plugins')();
$.foo = $.foo.configure(...);

This is a bit messy. Instead you can pass a postRequireTransforms object which will enable you to do this:

var $ = require('gulp-load-plugins')({
  postRequireTransforms: {
    foo: function(foo) {
      return foo.configure(...);
    }
  }
});

$.foo // is already configured

Everytime a plugin is loaded, we check to see if a transform is defined, and if so, we call that function, passing in the loaded plugin. Whatever this function returns is then used as the value that's returned by gulp-load-plugins.

For 99% of gulp-plugins you will not need this behaviour, but for the odd plugin it's a nice way of keeping your code cleaner.

Renaming

From 0.8.0, you can pass in an object of mappings for renaming plugins. For example, imagine you want to load the gulp-ruby-sass plugin, but want to refer to it as just sass:

gulpLoadPlugins({
  rename: {
    'gulp-ruby-sass': 'sass'
  }
});

Note that if you specify the renameFn options with your own custom rename function, while the rename option will still work, the replaceString and camelize options will be ignored.

npm Scopes

gulp-load-plugins comes with npm scope support. By default, the scoped plugins are accessible through an object on plugins that represents the scope. When maintainScope = false, the plugins are available in the top level just like any other non-scoped plugins.

Note: maintainScope is only available in Version 1.4.0 and up.

For example, if the plugin is @myco/gulp-test-plugin then you can access the plugin as shown in the following example:

var scoped = require('gulp-load-plugins')({
  // true is the default value
  maintainScope: true,
});

scoped.myco.testPlugin();

var nonScoped = require('gulp-load-plugins')({
  maintainScope: false,
});

nonScoped.testPlugin();

Lazy Loading

In 0.4.0 and prior, lazy loading used to only work with plugins that return a function. In newer versions though, lazy loading should work for any plugin. If you have a problem related to this please try disabling lazy loading and see if that fixes it. Feel free to open an issue on this repo too.

Override Pattern

In 1.4.0 and prior, configuring the pattern option would override the built-in ['gulp-*', 'gulp.*', '@*/gulp{-,.}*']. If overridePattern: false, the configured pattern will now extends the built-in matching.

For example, both are equivilant statements.

var overridePlugins = require('gulp-load-plugins')({
  // true is the default value
  overridePattern: true,
  pattern: ['gulp-*', 'gulp.*', '@*/gulp{-,.}*', 'foo-bar']
});

var extendedPlugins = require('gulp-load-plugins')({
  overridePattern: false,
  pattern: ['foo-bar']
});

Credit

Credit largely goes to @sindresorhus for his load-grunt-plugins plugin. This plugin is almost identical, just tweaked slightly to work with Gulp and to expose the required plugins.

Changelog

1.4.0

• added maintainScope - thanks @bretkikehara - PR

1.3.0

• added postRequireTransforms - thanks @vinitm - PR

1.2.4

• Fix bug in 1.2.3 release that stopped logging output in Gulp 3 - thanks @doowb

1.2.3

• Update dependencies in line with Gulp 4 - PR - thanks @doowb

1.2.2

• revert the previous PR in 1.2.1 which broke configuration loading for some users

1.2.1

• fix using the wrong require function - PR - thanks @mwessner

1.2

• throw an error if two packages are loaded that end up having the same name after the replaceString has been removed - thanks @carloshpds

1.1

• added DEBUG option to turn on logging and help us debug issues - thanks @dcamilleri

1.0.0

• added renameFn function to give users complete control over the name a plugin should be given when loaded - thanks @callumacrae

1.0.0-rc.1

• This is the first release candidate for what will become version 1 of gulp-load-plugins. Once a fix for #70 is landed, I plan to release V1.
• Breaking Change support for NODE_PATH is no longer supported. It was causing complexities and in the PR that droppped support no one shouted that they required NODE_PATH support.

0.10.0

• throw a more informative error if a plugin is loaded that gulp-load-plugins can't find. PR - thanks @connor4312
• allow require to look on the NODE_PATH if it can't find the module in the working directory. PR - thanks @chmanie

0.9.0

• add support for npm-scoped plugins. PR - thanks @hbetts

0.8.1

• fixed a bug where gulp-load-plugins would use the right package.json file but the wrong node_modules directory - thanks @callumacrae

0.8.0

• add the ability to rename plugins that gulp-load-plugins loads in.

0.7.1

• add files property to package.json so only required files are downloaded when installed - thanks @shinnn

0.7.0

• support loading plugins with a dot in the name, such as gulp.spritesmith - thanks to @MRuy
• upgrade multimatch to 1.0.0

0.6.0

• Fix issues around plugin picking wrong package.json file - thanks @iliakan (see issue).

0.5.3

• Show a nicer error if the plugin is unable to load any configuration and hence can't find any dependencies to load

0.5.2

• Swap out globule for multimatch, thanks @sindresorhus.

0.5.1

• Updated some internal dependencies which should see some small improvements - thanks @shinnn for this contribution.

0.5.0

• improved lazy loading so it should work with plugins that don't just return a function. Thanks to @nfroidure for help with this.

0.4.0

• plugins are lazy loaded for performance benefit. Thanks @julien-f for this.

0.3.0

• turn the camelize option on by default

0.2.0

• added camelize option, thanks @kombucha.
• renamed to gulp-load-plugins.

0.1.1

• add link to this repository into package.json (thanks @ben-eb).

0.1.0

• move to gulpLoadplugins returning an object with the tasks define.

0.0.5

• added replaceString option to configure exactly what gets replace when the plugin adds the module to the context

0.0.4

• fixed keyword typo so plugin appears in search for gulp plugins

0.0.3

• removed accidental console.log I'd left in

0.0.2

• fixed accidentally missing a dependency out of package.json

0.0.1

• initial release