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Automate with Grunt: The Build Tool for JavaScript
Grunt is everywhere. JavaScript projects from jQuery to Twitter Bootstrap use Grunt to convert code, run tests, and produce distributions for production. It's a build tool in the spirit of Make and Rake, but written with modern apps in mind. This book gets you up to speed with Grunt using practical hands-on examples, so you can wrangle your projects with ease. You'll learn how to create and maintain tasks and project builds, and automate your workflow with plugins and custom tasks.
JavaScript has moved from being the language you love to hate to the language you need to use. And as JavaScript applications get more complex, you need a process to manage that complexity. While online tutorials just explain how to slap together a configuration file, this book goes further and shows you how to create your own tasks, design your own project templates, combine plugins together to bring a web app to life, and build your own plugins.
You'll start by learning the basics of task creation, error handling, and logging as you create a simple configuration that executes basic JavaScript code using Node.js. Then you'll jump right into file manipulation as you read, write, copy, and delete files. You'll learn how Grunt's powerful multitasks work as you build a task to concatenate files together. Once you've got a grasp on these basics, you'll build a simple app with AngularJS and CoffeeScript, using Grunt to do all the heavy lifting and script processing. Finally, you'll create your own plugin so you can understand how plugins work.
Each chapter contains hands-on exercises and ideas for further study. Whether you rock Ruby or sling C#, Grunt will be a useful addition to your toolbox.
What You
This book covers Grunt 0.4.1 and higher, and requires basic knowledge of JavaScript and command-line tools on Windows, OS X, or Linux.
JavaScript has moved from being the language you love to hate to the language you need to use. And as JavaScript applications get more complex, you need a process to manage that complexity. While online tutorials just explain how to slap together a configuration file, this book goes further and shows you how to create your own tasks, design your own project templates, combine plugins together to bring a web app to life, and build your own plugins.
You'll start by learning the basics of task creation, error handling, and logging as you create a simple configuration that executes basic JavaScript code using Node.js. Then you'll jump right into file manipulation as you read, write, copy, and delete files. You'll learn how Grunt's powerful multitasks work as you build a task to concatenate files together. Once you've got a grasp on these basics, you'll build a simple app with AngularJS and CoffeeScript, using Grunt to do all the heavy lifting and script processing. Finally, you'll create your own plugin so you can understand how plugins work.
Each chapter contains hands-on exercises and ideas for further study. Whether you rock Ruby or sling C#, Grunt will be a useful addition to your toolbox.
What You
This book covers Grunt 0.4.1 and higher, and requires basic knowledge of JavaScript and command-line tools on Windows, OS X, or Linux.
84 pages, Paperback
First published April 23, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 25, 2014
Grunt becomes an important tool for web application development in recent years. But for the starters, some concepts cannot be easily understanding just from example they found on the web.
This book uses clearly examples to provide understanding of how Grunt work and how to use it effectively. The author use real-world examples so you can easily adopt them to your work immediately, chapter by chapter.
I recommend this book for everyone who making web in daily life.
This book uses clearly examples to provide understanding of how Grunt work and how to use it effectively. The author use real-world examples so you can easily adopt them to your work immediately, chapter by chapter.
I recommend this book for everyone who making web in daily life.
November 21, 2018
Interesting, with good examples, but grunt really only seems suitable for build and deployment work with lots of file movement, not as an all around tool.
February 15, 2017
I found this to be an insightful introduction to using Grunt as a task manager on Javascript projects. There were also some useful plug-ins that I will probably use going forward. Some of the references to other useful adjuncts such as unit testing may also prove useful. Along the way I got to use git commands a little more fluently as well (I was able to set up so as to use two different repos from the same machine).
I will keep this handy as a reference and continue building on those skills.
I will keep this handy as a reference and continue building on those skills.
March 5, 2016
On the whole this is an excellent introduction to the Grunt build system, covering petty much everything you need to know to get up and running. In particular, it didn't have the weakness common to many Pragmatic Programmer's books of the evangelical fervour to make use see the One True Way. And no flab, and none of the faux-friendly drivel so popular nowadays.
Weak points, in as far as there are any: occasionally in the final chapter, the exposition isn't quite clear, and you need to read the chapter several times. But as it's only about 5 pages, that's no loss. Also, the discussion of asynchronous activities, and their integration into grunt-init could have been more thorough.
Otherwise excellent - thanks to it I converted my main templates and build systems to Grunt in a couple of hours, and I'm very pleased with the results.
Weak points, in as far as there are any: occasionally in the final chapter, the exposition isn't quite clear, and you need to read the chapter several times. But as it's only about 5 pages, that's no loss. Also, the discussion of asynchronous activities, and their integration into grunt-init could have been more thorough.
Otherwise excellent - thanks to it I converted my main templates and build systems to Grunt in a couple of hours, and I'm very pleased with the results.
February 1, 2015
This is a part of Pragmatic Express series, and as such it's intent is to be short introduction to some tool. It does it's job ok, but there are a lot of places where the author just whizzes through tutorial like chapters leaving you wondering why is syntax written that way. Don't get me wrong, you will get some knowledge and even experience through it, but in some places it might left you with a feeling of a cookbook writing style: "Just do this, and this, and there you go..."
January 6, 2015
It is a great book, I do not know if I would say amazing, hence, if I could, I give it four and a half stars.
With this book I have not only learned about Grunt, but I have come to know other tools as well as the flow of web development. CoffeeScript, Sass, JSHint, Yeoman, Lineman, a large set of tools to take a look at. I really had fun with the examples and the exercises. Great book!
With this book I have not only learned about Grunt, but I have come to know other tools as well as the flow of web development. CoffeeScript, Sass, JSHint, Yeoman, Lineman, a large set of tools to take a look at. I really had fun with the examples and the exercises. Great book!
November 3, 2014
This was a quick read. I have had a chance to play with Grunt already, but this solidified some of the knowledge and provided some additional ideas. Clearly a powerful tool - especially combined with other scaffolding and build frameworks such as bower - Grunt moves front-side web development to a fully automatic build system. Exciting stuff!
May 18, 2015
Good intro into the basics of using Grunt. It gives a few concrete examples of some common tasks for web development. This book is mainly a teaser of the capabilities grunt provides, and serves mainly to encourage seeking out additional material online once you are up and running.
Definitely not a stand alone reference, but will get you up to the point where you can crawl with Grunt.
Definitely not a stand alone reference, but will get you up to the point where you can crawl with Grunt.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews