How do you create a file from a string in Gulp?

Question

In my gulpfile I have a version number in a string. I'd like to write the version number to a file. Is there a nice way to do this in Gulp, or should I be looking at more general NodeJS APIs?

Answer 1

If you'd like to do this in a gulp-like way, you can create a stream of "fake" vinyl files and call pipe per usual. Here's a function for creating the stream. "stream" is a core module, so you don't need to install anything:

const Vinyl = require('vinyl')  function string_src(filename, string) {   var src = require('stream').Readable({ objectMode: true })   src._read = function () {     this.push(new Vinyl({       cwd: "",       base: "",       path: filename,       contents: Buffer.from(string, 'utf-8')     }))     this.push(null)   }   return src } 

You can use it like this:

gulp.task('version', function () {   var pkg = require('package.json')   return string_src("version", pkg.version)     .pipe(gulp.dest('build/')) }) 

Answer 2

It's pretty much a one-liner in node:

require('fs').writeFileSync('dist/version.txt', '1.2.3'); 

Or from package.json:

var pkg = require('./package.json'); var fs = require('fs'); fs.writeFileSync('dist/version.txt', 'Version: ' + pkg.version); 

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I'm using it to specify a build date in an easily-accessible file, so I use this code before the usual return gulp.src(...) in the build task:

require('fs').writeFileSync('dist/build-date.txt', new Date());