webext-buildtools-builder-types

Introduction

Package with interfaces definitions for all webext-buildtools builders.

If you need complete solution for Web Extension build/deploy, go to webext-buildtools-integrated-builder repo.

Installation

npm install webext-buildtools-builder-types

Purpose

webext-buildtools is a toolkit for building and deploying Web Extensions (browser extensions standard introduced by Google and supported by Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, etc.).

Use this package to create own builder which implements ISimpleBuilder to make it compatible with other builders in webext-buildtools toolkit.

Main approaches

1. Builders are classes implemented ISimpleBuilder interface
2. Each builder represent a particular step of building or deploying webextension
3. Builder can have options (normally passed to it's constructor) to customize build process

Assets reusing

Different builders can perform similar operations (pack directory to zip for example) or require the same input data (path to extension directory). It's a reason to extract that operations to a separate build step (i.e. another builder). To use common intermediate (or final) build results builders can be chained:

1. Asset is a wrapping class implemented IBuildAsset which contains some build-related data
2. Builders can receive data (directly from caller or produced by another builders) needed to perform build (directory path, zip file, manifest file). These data are called inputs
3. Builders produce assets and optional side effects (like deploy) as a result of their work
4. Produced assets can be used to pass them on to another builders as inputs
5. IDisposableBuildAsset is asset which contains data, which can be disposed (removed/cleaned up) after entire build process (temporary files)

Logging

One more defined type is:

type ILogMethod = (level: string, message: string, ...meta: any[]) => any;

It's not used in ISimpleBuilder definition, but usually you can pass logMethod: ILogMethod | undefined to builder constructor to customize logging behaviour.

Example of ILogMethod implementation using winston package:

const winston = require('winston');

const logger = winston.createLogger({
        level: 'info',
        format: winston.format.combine(
            winston.format.splat(),
            winston.format.cli()
        ),
        prettyPrint: JSON.stringify,
        transports: [new winston.transports.Console()]
    });

const logMethod = logger.log.bind(logger);

Using console.log:

const logger = (level, message, ...meta) => {
    console.log(message);
    for (const m of meta) {
        console.log(m);
    }
};