Is it possible to prompt user for input in any grunt task?

Question

I'm attempting to use Grunt to make a directory in a project for new posts to a blog. It would essentially create a directory inside of a posts directory that is named YYYYMMDDDD-PostNameInPascalCase.

In order to do this, I'd have to prompt the user for post name each time that I execute the task. I know that grunt-init prompts users for creating projects from project templates, but I'm curious if there's a way to do this inside the Gruntfile.js file for an already established project.

Any thoughts?

Answer 1

It's been a while since this question was last asked, but there is a project on Github that attempts to do what the questioner was looking for. It's called grunt-prompt and here's the url: https://github.com/dylang/grunt-prompt. It's basically a way to integrate prompts into the Gruntfile. From the project readme you would do something like:

grunt.initConfig({
  prompt: {
    target: {
      options: {
        questions: [
        {
          config: 'config.name', // arbitray name or config for any other grunt task
           type: '<question type>', // list, checkbox, confirm, input, password
          message: 'Question to ask the user',
          default: 'value', // default value if nothing is entered
          choices: 'Array|function(answers)',
          validate: function(value), // return true if valid, error message if invalid
          filter:  function(value), // modify the answer
          when: function(answers) // only ask this question when this function returns true
        }
      ]
    }
  },
},
})

Answer 2

Yes, you can do something like this:

grunt.registerTask('makePost', 'Make a new post dir.', function(n) {
  if (n == null) {
    grunt.log.warn('Post name must be specified, like makePost:PostNameGoesHere.');
  }

  // Run other tasks here
  grunt.task.run('foo:' + n, 'bar:' + n, 'baz:' + n);
});

For more infomation and source on how to pass some arguments look at the Grunt FAQ.