@lpha

Purpose

@lpha is a simple utility for running tasks in JS projects. It lets you extract bits of code that are usually part of automation or CI scripting. Possible use cases:

• SPA app deployment to AWS S3/CloudFront
• App packaging with Webpack (automatic, without need to create your own Webpack configuration) (see pack-alpha-plugin)

Installation

npm install @lpha/core -D
# or
yarn add @lpha/core -D

Plugins

@lpha itself doesn't do much, as it is just a runner of commands that have to be defined as separate entities. It provides input validation mechanisms (using well-typed io-ts) and utilities for logging and file handling (see below).

Usage

To use an external plugin, install it using yarn or npm. Plugins should have -alpha-plugin package name suffix and they are detected automatically. Follow below syntax to run commands.

# if you installed @lpha globally, you can launch "@" directly:
@ [command-name] [--command-option=...]
# or if you installed locally use npm or yarn:
yarn @ [command-name] [--command-option=...]

All parameters of a command can be set using one of three methods:

• configuration file (a primary, always available)
• environmental variables (overrides configuration file, available if variable name has been set by plugin author)
• command line parameters (overrides env vars, available if variable name has been set by plugin author)

Development

If you'd like to automate a task and create a plugin for that, just use CommandBuilder and ParameterBuilder:

import { CommandBuilder, ParametersBuilder, Types, Logger } from '@lpha/core';

const TAG = 'My Command';

const command = new CommandBuilder()
  .name('my-command')
  .description('command-description')
  .parameters(
    new ParametersBuilder()
      .add('parameterName', {
        type: Types.string(), // Types equals to `T` from `io-ts`
        description: 'Your package type',
        required: true,
        cli: 'parameter-name',
        env: 'PARAMETER_NAME'
      })
      .build(),
  )
  .execute(async ({
    parameterName,
  }) => {
    Logger.log(TAG, 'Executing a task...');
    return await doSomething(parameterName);
  })
  .build();

// You can export the command(s) in many different ways:
export const cmd = command;
module.exports = command;
export default command;
export const commandsArray = [
  command,
];
export default [
  command,
];

@lpha/core package provides promisified utilities for file management:

• makeDir
• readFile
• writeFile
• copyFile
• access
• rename

Documentation of all available commands can be generated automatically to ./docs/commands/ directory after running @ docs or @ self docs. Remember to define the "main" field in your package.json, so that @lpha could pick it up. To run such defined commands, run @ self exported-command-name.

If you'd like to run custom, per-project commands defined i.e. in ./commands/index.js run @ self:commands exported-command-name.

Configuration file

Configuration can be placed directly in package.json, like below:

{
  "@": {
    "command-name": {
      "option": "value",
      "option2": 10
    }
  }
}

You can also place your configuration in a separate js or json file named: @, a, @lpha or alpha. Configuration file name can begin with a dot.