grunt-environmental

Load process.env from environmental-style shell scripts for subsequent grunt tasks.


Getting Started

This plugin requires Grunt ~0.4.5

If you haven't used Grunt before, be sure to check out
the Getting Started guide, as it
explains how to create a Gruntfile as
well as install and use Grunt plugins. Once you're familiar with that process,
you may install this plugin with this command:

``shell
npm install grunt-environmental --save-dev
`

Once the plugin has been installed, it may be enabled inside your Gruntfile
with this line of JavaScript:

`js
grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-environmental');
`

The "environmental" Task

This task is intended to make environment variables configured using
the conventions of the
environmental package
available to subsequent tasks run within the same Grunt
instance.

$3

The environmental package uses shell scripts to establish the desired
configuration, but invoking them just via exec has no effect on the
environment available in the node interpreter. This task evaluates
the environment, executes environmental's script, re-checks the
shell environment afterward, and then the changes the script made to
the environment it ran within, are made to the environment in node's
process.env.


When the environmental Grunt task is invoked with a target,
it uses that target
as the name of the environmental shell script to execute. For
example, running the Grunt task environmental:staging loads
environment variables by executing the script ./envs/staging.sh.
Specifying a target name that doesn't have a matching shell
script in the envs directory will produce an error. If the
task is invoked without a target name, the default is
development (and an error will occur if the script
./envs/development.sh can't be found).

$3

There are two keys that the environmental task looks for within
its options hash in the overall Grunt configuration,

* envsPath By default, the environmental task looks for
scripts to execute within the directory ./envs. If this isn't
the correct directory in your system, use envsPath to specify a
string that gives the path of the directory where shell scripts
should be found.

* inject The environmental task can also insert items into node's
environment from a hash literal in the Grunt configuration. The hash
of environment variables that should be injected is determined by the
third part of the Grunt task name that is used to invoke it--that is
the options argument name that follows the target name. When a third
task name component is present, the environmental task will look
for an inject key in its options, and for the task argument as a
key within the inject hash. It will then take the entire content
of the hash under that key and populate it into the current environment.

The keys in each injected hash are used to create the injected environment
variable names. Complete names are created by appending the keys to the
value in the NODE_APP_PREFIX environment variable. This will not
work correctly unless the shell script executed has, in fact, set
NODE_APP_PREFIX as is environmental's convention.

For example, this configuration in Gruntfile.js

`
grunt.initConfig({
environmental: {
options: {
envsPath: "deploys"),
inject: {
"greek": {
INJECTED_A: "alpha",
INJECTED_B: "omega"
}
}
}
}
});
`

Would set deploys as the name of the directory that will be used
as the location for environmental shell scripts. And, if NODE_APP_PREFIX
is equal to ALPHABET, then invoking the task environmental:test:greek
will load the node environment by executing deploys/test.sh and then
setting the environment variables ALPHABET_INJECTED_A and
ALPHABET_INJECTED_B.

$3

Here are two Grunt task definitions using grunt-environmental:

`js
grunt.registerTask("test", "run automated tests", ["environmental:test", "mochacli:unit"]);
grunt.registerTask("start", "start the server in the development environment",
["environmental", "server-start"]);
`

With this configuration, the test task will be run with the environment
variables set by the script ./envs/test.sh and the start task will
be run with the environment established by ./envs/development.sh.




Bonus Task

This package also contains a Grunt task named "printenv", equivalent
to the \*nix printenv(1)` command. It's used by the unit tests to sample
Grunt's environment before and after the primary task executes.

Contributing

In lieu of a formal style guide, take care to maintain the existing coding
style. Add unit tests for any new or changed functionality. Lint and test
our code using Grunt.