Assemble makes it dead simple to build modular sites and components from reusable templates and data.
This project just launched so expect frequent changes. And if you find this project interesting please consider starring it to receive updates.
Getting Help
Assemble has many more features than we've been able to document thus far. So while we work to improve the docs, please let us know if you have any questions or have any trouble getting Assemble to work. And feel free to create an Issue, we're here to help.
Table of Contents
Quick start
This plugin requires Grunt ~0.4.1
If you haven't used Grunt before, be sure to check out the Getting Started guide, as it explains how to create a Gruntfile as well as install and use Grunt plugins. Once you're familiar with that process, you may install this plugin with this command:
npm install assemble --save-dev
Once the plugin has been installed, it may be enabled inside your Gruntfile with this line of JavaScript:
grunt.loadNpmTasks('assemble');
When completed, you'll be able to run the various grunt
commands provided:
build - grunt assemble
Runs the assemble
task to rebuild the project.
test - grunt test
Runs jshint on JavaScripts and mocha unit tests on your templates.
watch - grunt watch
Requires grunt-contrib-watch, npm i grunt-contrib-watch
. This is a convenience task for watching files and automatically re-building them whenever you save. Requires the grunt-contrib-watch Grunt plugin.
Should you encounter problems with installing dependencies or running the grunt
commands, be sure to first uninstall any previous versions (global and local) you may have installed, and then rerun npm install
.
The "assemble" task
In your project's Gruntfile, add a section named assemble
to the data object passed into grunt.initConfig()
.
grunt.initConfig({
assemble: {
options: {
},
your_target: {
}
}
});
grunt.loadNpmTasks('assemble');
grunt.registerTask('default', [
'jshint',
'assemble'
]);
Task targets, files and options may be specified according to the grunt Configuring tasks guide.
Options
See the Options section on the Wiki for more information.
assets
Path to "assets" (or "public") folder.
Type: String
(optional)
Default: undefined
Used with the {{assets}}
template to resolve the relative path to the destination assets folder, from the dest file.
Example:
assemble: {
options: {
assets: 'dist/assets'
},
...
}
Example usage:
<link href="{{assets}}/css/styles.css" rel="stylesheet">
Resulting in:
<link href="dist/assets/css/styles.css" rel="stylesheet">
data
The data to populate templates.
Type: Object
(optional)
Parameters: String|Array
Default: src/data
Gets the data from specified JSON
and/or YAML
files to populate the templates when rendered. Data gets passed through the data
object to the options on the assemble task, then to the context in your templates. Also useful for specifying configuration data, such as when to render certain templates. For example:
page.json
{
"production": false
}
<link href="assets/bootstrap.css" rel="stylesheet">
Note that Handlebars.js is the only supported template engine at this time. If you would like to see another engine added to Assemble, please make a feature request (or pull request).
Example:
assemble: {
options: {
data: ['src/data/*.{json,yml,yaml}', 'config/global.json', 'styles/bootstrap.json']
},
...
}
Data: widget.json
(or widget.yml
)
{
"name": "Square Widget",
"modifier": "widget-square"
}
Template: widget.hbs
<div class="widget {{ widget.modifier }}">{{ widget.name }}</div>
Compiled result after running grunt assemble
:
<div class="widget widget-square">Square Widget</div>
Also see: YAML front matter todo...
layout
Type: String
(optional)
Default: undefined
If set, this defines the layout file to use for that [target][tasks-and-targets]. Unlike Jekyll, Assemble requires a file extension since you are not limited to using a single file type.
partials
Type: Object
(optional)
Parameters: Object|Array
Default: undefined
Specifies the Handlebars partials files, or paths to the directories of files to be used.
engine
Type: String
(optional)
Default: handlebars
The engine to use for processing client-side templates. Assemble ships Handlebars as the default template engine, if you are interested in using a different engine visit the documentation to see an up-to-date list of template engines.
Pull requests are welcome for additional template engines. Since we're still working to update the docs, you many also contact @doowb for more information or create an [Issue][assemble-issues].
helpers
Type: Object|Array
(optional)
Default: helper-lib
Path defined to a directory of custom helpers to use with the specified template engine. Assemble currently includes more than 75 built-in Handlebars helpers, since Handlebars is the default engine for Assemble.
assemble: {
options: {
helpers: 'your/custom/helpers'
},
...
}
ext
Type: String
Default: .html
Specify the file extension for destination files. Example:
assemble: {
sitemap: {
options: {
ext: '.xml'
},
files: {
'.': ['path/to/sitemap.tmpl']
}
},
readme: {
options: {
ext: '.md'
},
files: {
'.': ['path/to/readme.tmpl']
}
}
}
flatten
Type: Boolean
Default: false
Remove anything after (and including) the first "." in the destination path, then append this value. In other words, when they are are generated from different source folders this "flattens" them into the same destination directory. See [building the files object dynamically][files-object] for more information on files formats.
YAML options
Assemble makes the following options available from js-yaml
. See js-yaml for more information.
filename
Type: String
Default: null
String to be used as a file path in error/warning messages.
strict
Type: Boolean
Default: false
Makes the loader to throw errors instead of warnings.
schema
Type: String
Default: DEFAULT_SCHEMA
Specifies a schema to use.
Custom Options
Contexts
A common use case for custom options is to add contexts for development
and production
environments:
assemble {
myProject: {
options: {
development: true,
production: false
},
files: {
'dest': ['src/templates*.hbs']
}
}
}
In your templates just wrap sections with these contexts to include or exclude content based on current working environment.
{{#development}}
<script src="script.js"></script>
{{/development}}
{{#production}}
<script src="script.min.js"></script>
{{/production}}
Usage Examples
Markdown
Wouldn't it be awesome if you could just use markdown however you wanted, wherever you needed it?
Assemble gives you the flexibility to:
- Write entire documents in markdown, and later compile them to HTML
- Keep sections of documents in externalized markdown files, so they can be imported into other documents
- Embed or write "inline" markdown on-the-fly inside HTML documents
Read more about markdown features and options
in the markdown documentation.
"Include" extenal content
Use the markdown expression, {{md}}
, to enable importing of external markdown content.
Example #1: using full path
{{md ../path/to/content.md}}
Example #2: using variables
Or use a variable instead of setting the path directly inside the template. For example you can add the content variable to a YAML header:
---
page:
title: Home
content: ../path/to/content.md
---
then use it like this:
{{md content}}
Write "inline" markdown
The {{#markdown}}{{/markdown}}
block expression allows markdown to be written "inline" with any HTML and handlebars content.
Example:
{{#markdown}}
# Inline Markdown is awesome
> this is markdown content
* useful for simple content
* great for blog posts
* easier on the eyes than angle brackets
* even links look prettier
### Pretty links
[Visit Assemble](https://github.com/assemble/assemble)
### Even Prettier links
Embed handlebars templates to make them even prettier.
{{#page.links}}
[{{text}}]({{href}})
{{/page.links}}
{{/markdown}}
Task defaults
Task targets, files and options may be specified according to the grunt Configuring tasks guide.
Build templates
assemble: {
templates: {
files: {
'index.html': ['index.hbs']
}
}
}
Build multiple specified files individually
You can specify multiple destination: [source]
items in files
.
assemble: {
gh_pages: {
files: {
'docs': ['getting-started.hbs'],
'.': ['index.hbs']
}
}
}
Build directory of files
Grunt supports filename expansion (also know as globbing) via the built-in [node-glob][node-glob] and [minimatch][minimatch] libraries. So Templates may be used in filepaths or glob patterns.
assemble: {
project: {
files: {
'.': ['templates/*.hbs']
}
}
}
Example Projects
Browse the examples folder to get a better idea of what Assemble can do. To build the examples run grunt examples
.
Build Bootstrap's Grid with JSON or YAML
This example shows how to use JSON and handlebars templates to manipulate Bootstrap's grid system. We only have to define the grid one time using templates, then we can updated the grid columns, rows, and even content from a JSON or YAML file.
Screenshot
The finished result of the example project looks like this:
This is what our handlebars grid looks like. No really, this is the code for the entire grid!:
{{#grid.container}}
<div class="container">
{{#rows}}
<div class="row">
{{#columns}}
<div class="span{{width}}"> {{md content}} </div>
{{/columns}}
</div>
{{/rows}}
</div>
{{/grid.container}}
And then we use an external data file, either grid.yml
or grid.json
, to configure the grid and provide the content.
YAML version
This is the data for our grid, written in YAML (grid.yml
):
container:
rows:
- columns:
- width: 4
heading: Overview
content: <%= content %>/overview.md
- width: 4
heading: Getting Started
content: <%= content %>/getting-started.md
- width: 4
heading: Basics
content: <%= content %>/basics.md
- columns:
- width: 6
heading: Templates
content: <%= content %>/templates.md
- width: 6
heading: Advanced
content: <%= content %>/advanced.md
JSON version
And the same configuration writtin in JSON (grid.json
) instead:
{
"container": {
"rows": [
{
"columns": [
{
"width": 4,
"heading": "Overview",
"content": "<%= content %>/overview.md"
},
{
"width": 4,
"heading": "Getting Started",
"content": "<%= content %>/getting-started.md"
},
{
"width": 4,
"heading": "Basics",
"content": "<%= content %>/basics.md"
}
]
},
{
"columns": [
{
"width": 6,
"heading": "Templates",
"content": "<%= content %>/templates.md"
},
{
"width": 6,
"heading": "Advanced",
"content": "<%= content %>/advanced.md"
}
]
}
]
}
}
If you're satisfied with the default src
and dest
paths in the assemble
, simply run grunt assemble
to compile the grid to static HTML. Or run grunt watch
to continuously watch files and automatically re-build when changes occur.
Contributing
Want to help make assemble even better? All constructive feedback and contributions are welcome, so please consider contributing! We can always use help creating, tests, documentation or resolving Issues, but if you have other ideas for how you can help, Brian and I would love to hear them!
https://github.com/assemble/assemble/issues
Authors
Jon Schlinkert
Brian Woodward
Copyright and license
Copyright 2013 Assemble
MIT License
Release History
- 2013-04-06 v0.3.3 helper-lib properly externalized and wired up. Global variables for filename, ext and pages
- 2013-03-22 v0.3.22 Merged global and target level options so data and partial files can be joined
- 2013-03-22 v0.3.21 Valid YAML now allowed in options.data object (along with JSON)
- 2013-03-18 v0.3.14 new relative helper for resolving relative paths
- 2013-03-16 v0.3.13 new dashify and formatPhone helpers
- then-til-now v0.1.0-v0.3.0 Leaned how to commit too many times while working on README.
- Stardate 45047.2 v0.1.0 Visited the uninhabited El-Adrel system. Returned home. Started assemble.
Roadmap
(Big plans in the works)
Authored by assemble
This file was generated using Grunt and assemble on Thu Apr 18 2013 23:35:27.