html-stitcher
v0.1.2
Published
CLI tool to build HTML files from partial files
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gmillsReadme
html-stitcher
About The Project
html-stitcher is a CLI build tool for compiling HTML files from re-usable components. It is designed for decomposing large HTML files into smaller chunks to make them easier to work with, improving readability and allowing re-use.
To illustrate the concept, html-stitcher takes the files:
<!-- index.html -->
<html>
<body>
<greeting></greeting>
</body>
</html>
<!-- greeting.partial.html -->
<p>Hello from html-stitcher!</p>And compiles them into:
<html>
<body>
<p>Hello from html-stitcher!</p>
</body>
</html>The Build Process
html-stitcher reads HTML files, which are either categorized into root files or partial files:
- Root files act as entrypoints for
html-stitcherto process and generate output for. Output may be written to file or to the terminal to be piped elsewhere. - Partial files are only processed when referenced by another file. The output of processing a partial file is written into the output for the file that referenced it.
Any file can include the output of a partial file in its own output by including a <name></name> element, where name is the name of the partial file, preceding the first dot.
Installation
npm install --save-dev html-stitcher
Usage
Process a single file:
html-stitcher path/to/root/file.html
Or process a directory:
html-stitcher path/to/src/directory -o path/to/dist/directory
Options
For the full set of arguments, see html-stitcher --help.
--output <path>
- When processing a single file,
<path>is a file where the output will be written to - When processing a directory,
<path>is an existing directory where all output files will be written
--partial-files <pattern>
<pattern>is a glob pattern thathtml-stitcheruses to find partial files, relative to the input file or directory.
--root-files <pattern>
<pattern>is a glob pattern thathtml-stitcheruses to find root files, relative to the input directory. This option is not used when processing single file inputs.
--parameters <params..>
<params..>is a list of key-value pairs, e.g.param1=value1 param2=value2.., used for Parameter Substitution
Features
Parameter Substitution
Files processed by html-stitcher may include ${param} strings, where param is the name of a parameter value to be substituted in its place:
<!-- city.partial.html -->
<li>
<b style="color: ${color}">${name}</b>
<p>Population: ${population}</p>
</li>Parameters can either be defined with the --parameters argument, or they can be defined as attributes added to the partial element of the including file:
<!-- index.html -->
<h2>Largest Cities by Population</h2>
<ol>
<!-- Each city has a `name`, `population` and `color` parameter -->
<city name="Tokyo" population="37,468,000" color="red"></city>
<city name="Delhi" population="28,514,000" color="blue"></city>
<city name="Shanghai" population="25,582,000" color="green"></city>
</ol>The output of processing index.html is:
<!-- output.html -->
<h2>Largest Cities by Population</h2>
<ol>
<li>
<b style="color: red">Tokyo</b>
<p>Population: 37,468,000</p>
</li>
<li>
<b style="color: blue">Delhi</b>
<p>Population: 28,514,000</p>
</li>
<li>
<b style="color: green">Shanghai</b>
<p>Population: 25,582,000</p>
</li>
</ol>Inner Substitution
Inner substitution is a variation of parameter substitution, only the parameter name is inner and the parameter value is the inner HTML content of the partial element:
<!-- card.partial.html -->
<div>
<p>${inner}</p>
</div>
<!-- index.html -->
<div>
<card>The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog</card>
<card>The five boxing wizards jump quickly</card>
<card>How vexingly quick daft zebras jump</card>
</div>
<!-- output.html -->
<div>
<div>
<p>The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>The five boxing wizards jump quickly</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>How vexingly quick daft zebras jump</p>
</div>
</div>Examples
This GitHub repo provides a set of minimal examples:
Acknowledgements
Thanks to..
- commander for the command line interface
- glob for pattern based file searching
- xml2js for some minimal HTML parsing
Road Map
- Optional end tags when including partials - i.e. allow
<greeting>in place of<greeting></greeting>.