gulp-nodemon

gulp-nodemon

it's gulp + nodemon + convenience

Install

$ npm install --save-dev gulp-nodemon

Usage

Gulp-nodemon looks almost exactly like regular nodemon, but it's made for use with gulp tasks.

nodemon([options])

You can pass an object to gulp-nodemon with options like you would in nodemon config.

Example below will start server.js in development mode and watch for changes, as well as watch all .html and .js files in the directory.

gulp.task('start', function () {
  nodemon({
    script: 'server.js'
  , ext: 'js html'
  , env: { 'NODE_ENV': 'development' }
  })
})

Synchronous Build Tasks

NOTE: This feature requires Node v0.12 because of child_process.spawnSync.

Nodemon is powerful but lacks the ability to compile/cleanup code prior to restarting the application... until now! Most build systems can never be complete without compilation, and now it works harmoniously with your nodemon loop.

{ tasks: [Array || Function(changedFiles)] }

If you want to lint your code when you make changes that's easy to do with a simple event. But what if you need to wait while your project re-builds before you start it up again? This isn't possible with vanilla nodemon, and can be tedious to implement yourself, but it's easy with gulp-nodemon:

nodemon({
  script: 'index.js'
, tasks: ['browserify']
})

What if you want to decouple your build processes by language? Or even by file? Easy, just set the tasks option to a function. Gulp-nodemon will pass you the list of changed files and it'll let you return a list of tasks you want run.

nodemon({
  script: './index.js'
, ext: 'js css'
, tasks: function (changedFiles) {
    var tasks = []
    changedFiles.forEach(function (file) {
      if (path.extname(file) === '.js' && !~tasks.indexOf('lint')) tasks.push('lint')
      if (path.extname(file) === '.css' && !~tasks.indexOf('cssmin')) tasks.push('cssmin')
    })
    return tasks
  }
})

Events

gulp-nodemon returns a stream just like any other NodeJS stream, except for the on method, which conveniently accepts gulp task names in addition to the typical function.

.on([event], [Array || Function])

1. [event] is an event name as a string. See nodemon events.
2. [tasks] An array of gulp task names or a function to execute.

Example

The following example will run your code with nodemon, lint it when you make changes, and log a message when nodemon runs it again.

// Gulpfile.js
var gulp = require('gulp')
  , nodemon = require('gulp-nodemon')
  , jshint = require('gulp-jshint')

gulp.task('lint', function () {
  gulp.src('./**/*.js')
    .pipe(jshint())
})

gulp.task('develop', function () {
  nodemon({ script: 'server.js'
          , ext: 'html js'
          , ignore: ['ignored.js']
          , tasks: ['lint'] })
    .on('restart', function () {
      console.log('restarted!')
    })
})