What is Angular Library Builder (nglb)?

It's a CLI Tool to build Angular (2+) libraries ready to be published to npm.

What problem is Angular Library Builder (nglb) trying to solve?

At the moment there is no official documentation/guidelines on how to build and publish Angular (2+) components/libraries/services/modules to npm. Angular Library Builder (nglb) is trying to solve this in the easiest way possible.

How does Angular Library Builder (nglb) solve this?

1. If it is a component, inlines html template file into the component as a string, replacing templateUrl with template
   • In the inlining process nglb also minifies html using html-minifier
2. If it is a component, inlines scss/sass/css file(s) into the component as a string, replacing stylesUrls with styles. It uses:
   • node-sass to compile scss/sass file(s)
   • autoprefixer to improve browser compatibilty
   • csso to minimize/optimize your css
3. Finally, it compiles your resulting typescript files with all your html and css inlined, using @angular/compiler-cli (ngc), creating *.d.ts, *.js, *.js.map, *.metadata.json files

Getting Started

Install the angular-library-builder command

npm install --save-dev angular-library-builder

How to use angular-library-builder?

Add angular-library-builder (nglb) script, main and types to package.json:

"main": "./lib-dist/your-main-file.js",
"types": "./lib-dist/your-main-file.d.ts",
"scripts": {
  "build:library": "nglb --rootDir src/lib --outDir lib-dist"
}

or

"main": "./lib-dist/your-main-file.js",
"types": "./lib-dist/your-main-file.d.ts",
"scripts": {
  "build:library": "angular-library-builder --rootDir src/lib --outDir lib-dist"
}

Now, in your project root:

npm run build:library

Congratulations! Your library is available in lib-dist folder ready to be published to npm.

To publish your new library to npm, execute the following command in your project root:

npm publish

Options that angular-library-builder supports

option (argument) | description ------------ | ------------- --rootDir | Specifies the root directory of input files. Example: nglb --rootDir src, [required] --outDir | Redirect output structure to the directory. Example: nglb --outDir dist, [required] --tsconfig | Possibility to extend/override properties in default tsconfig-ngc.json. Example: nglb --tsconfig path/to/your/override-tsconfig-ngc.json --help (-h) | Print help message

How to change angular-library-builder tsconfig-ngc.json default properties?

Sometimes the defaults aren't good enough for everybody.

Example

Let's imagine that you want to change slightly the build process:

1. change the default "target" from "es5" to "es2015"
2. add a new property, for example, "noImplicitAny": true,

To acomplish this create a file called, for example, override-tsconfig-ngc.json in your project root. Your override-tsconfig-ngc.json file can be something like:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "target": "es2015",
    "noImplicitAny": true
  }
}

Then, you invoke nglb like this:

nglb --rootDir path/to/your/source --outDir path/to/dist --tsconfig override-tsconfig-ngc.json

Authors and Contributors

@bmvantunes (Bruno Antunes, author)

Special thanks to gulp-inline-ng2-template. Without gulp-inline-ng2-template angular-library-builder would not be possible!

License

The repository code is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license.