How to get grunt task name given on command line?

Question

In order to customize my grunt tasks, I need access to the grunt task name given on the command line when starting grunt.

The options is no problem, since its well documented (grunt.options). It's also well documented how to find out the task name, when running a grunt task.

But I need access to the task name before.

Eg, the user writes grunt build --target=client

When configuring the grunt job in my Gruntfile.js, I can use grunt.option('target') to get 'client'.

But how do I get hold of parameter build before the task build starts?

Any guidance is much appreciated!

Answer 1

Your grunt file is basically just a function. Try adding this line to the top:

module.exports = function( grunt ) {
/*==> */    console.log(grunt.option('target'));
/*==> */    console.log(grunt.cli.tasks);

// Add your pre task code here...

Running with grunt build --target=client should give you the output:

client
[ 'build' ]

At that point, you can run any code you need to before your task is run including setting values with new dependencies.

Answer 2

A better way is to use grunt.task.current which has information about the currently running task, including a name property. Within a task, the context (i.e. this) is the same object. So . . .

grunt.registerTask('foo', 'Foobar all the things', function() {
  console.log(grunt.task.current.name); // foo
  console.log(this.name); // foo
  console.log(this === grunt.task.current); // true
});

If build is an alias to other tasks and you just want to know what command was typed that led to the current task execution, I typically use process.argv[2]. If you examine process.argv, you'll see that argv[0] is node (because grunt is a node process), argv[1] is grunt, and argv[2] is the actual grunt task (followed by any params in the remainder of argv).

EDIT:

Example output from console.log(grunt.task.current) on [email protected] from within a task (can't have a current task from not a current task).

{
  nameArgs: 'server:dev',
  name: 'server',
  args: [],
  flags: {},
  async: [Function],
  errorCount: [Getter],
  requires: [Function],
  requiresConfig: [Function],
  options: [Function],
  target: 'dev',
  data: { options: { debugPort: 5858, cwd: 'server' } },
  files: [],
  filesSrc: [Getter]
}