Getting Started with Gulp

About This Book

• Learn the basics of node.js, npm, and gulp and how they work together
• Harness the power of gulp to solve a number of reccurring problems that you are likely to face while building complex web applications
• A step-by-step guide to help you simplify and manage complex tasks such as image compression, minification, and so on

Who This Book Is For

If you are a developer who is new to build systems and task runners but have prior experience with web development, then this book is the right choice for you. You need to have some basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

What You Will Learn

• Create files and directories and run applications using the command line
• Get to know the basics of node.js and npm and how they relate to gulp
• Write basic tasks that will concatenate, minify, compress, and preprocess your files
• Understand the internal working and structure of gulpfiles and gulp tasks
• Install gulp plugins and add them as project dependencies
• Gain a solid understanding of gulp to write your own custom tasks from scratch
• Discover ways to add additional functionality to improve your tasks

In Detail

Gulp is a fast and powerful JavaScript task runner that is built upon the node.js platform. It allows you to create tasks that can automate common workflow processes. Gulp.js is comparatively new and has been developed keeping in mind the issues that developers have encountered with Grunt.

Getting Started with Gulp introduces you to the world of building and testing JavaScript applications using gulp. This book is a hands-on guide to get you up to speed with gulp. It will instill you with the ability to automate several common development tasks to vastly improve your development workflow. It will get you started with gulp quickly and efficiently, providing you with core concepts of gulp, node.js, and npm.

By the end of this book, you will be able to create your very own gulp environments from scratch, create and maintain tasks and project builds, and automate your workflow with plugins and custom tasks.