Grunt.js and folder iteration + options per folder

Question

I'm looking if its possible when using grunt to build a task that would use my folder structure to build data.

I wanted to build a website from folder structure.

For example I have:

- data
-- folder_n
--- options.json
--- webpagetext.txt
--- additional.html

etc.

Then generate my webpage also in folder structure (folder_n/{variable_as_friendly_url}.html)

Is it possible to do with grunt? I read most of docs, but did not find if that would be possible.

Edit: How would I see it in PHP

<?php
/*
    Basic project structure

    templates/
    - template_1.php
    - template_2.php
    - template_3.php
    datafeed/
    - subpage_1/
    -- header_image.png
    -- webpagetext.txt
    -- options.json
    - subpage_2/
    -- header_image.png
    -- webpagetext.txt
    -- options.json
    - subpage_3/
    -- header_image.png
    -- webpagetext.txt
    -- options.json
    - subpage_n/
    -- header_image.png
    -- webpagetext.txt
    -- options.json

*/

// IN PHP it would look like.

foreach (glob('datafeed/*') as $dir){
    foreach(glob('templates/*') as $tpl){
        constructpage($dir, $tpl);
    }
}

function constructpage($dir, $tpl) {
    $options = json_decode($dir.'options.json');
    $output_html_file_name = 'output/'.basename($dir) . '/' . basename($dir) . '.html';
    /*
        Logic that would copy, assign vars etc for template in $tpl.
    */

}

But grunt is my choice because of: I want to learn it, it got some pretty cool tools.

Answer 1

What you need is a Yeoman generator/sub-generator

---

WHAT IT IS:

According to the Yeoman website, generator is basically a plugin that can be run with the yo command to scaffold complete projects or useful parts

---

WHAT IT CAN DO

You can run Yeoman commands from the command line; Yeoman is able to acommodate the code it creates and adapt it to the parameters you provide, or which are present in your files.

---

DOCUMENTATION

For more information about Yeoman scaffolding:

Yeoman official tutorial

Call sub-generators with user-supplied arguments

---

FOR (STILL) MORE AUTOMATION

Also, although I still only have a partial understanding of what you really mean to achieve, you might want to trigger the creation of files by Yeoman, when some file directory exists, by using a Grunt watch like so:

watch: {
  scripts: {
    files: ['**/*.file-directory-to-detect'],
    tasks: ['myCustomYeomanScript'],
  },
}

and grunt-shell like so:

grunt.initConfig({
shell: {
    myCustomYeomanScript: {
        command: 'yo createMyFiles'
    }
}

});