vinyl-fs

Vinyl adapter for the file system.

What is Vinyl?

Vinyl is a very simple metadata object that describes a file. When you think of a file, two attributes come to mind: path and contents. These are the main attributes on a Vinyl object. A file does not necessarily represent something on your computer’s file system. You have files on S3, FTP, Dropbox, Box, CloudThingly.io and other services. Vinyl can be used to describe files from all of these sources.

What is a Vinyl Adapter?

While Vinyl provides a clean way to describe a file, we now need a way to access these files. Each file source needs what I call a "Vinyl adapter". A Vinyl adapter simply exposes a src(globs) and a dest(folder) method. Each return a stream. The src stream produces Vinyl objects, and the dest stream consumes Vinyl objects. Vinyl adapters can expose extra methods that might be specific to their input/output medium, such as the symlink method vinyl-fs provides.

Usage

var map = require('map-stream');
var vfs = require('vinyl-fs');

var log = function(file, cb) {
  console.log(file.path);
  cb(null, file);
};

vfs.src(['./js/**/*.js', '!./js/vendor/*.js'])
  .pipe(map(log))
  .pipe(vfs.dest('./output'));

API

src(globs[, options])

Takes a glob string or an array of glob strings as the first argument and an options object as the second. Returns a stream of vinyl File objects.

Note: UTF-8 BOM will be stripped from all UTF-8 files read with .src unless disabled in the options.

Globs

Globs are executed in order, so negations should follow positive globs.

For example:

fs.src(['!b*.js', '*.js'])

would not exclude any files, but the following would:

fs.src(['*.js', '!b*.js'])

Options

• Values passed to the options must be of the right type, otherwise they will be ignored.
• All options can be passed a function instead of a value. The function must return a value of the right type, otherwise it will be ignored.

options.buffer

Whether or not you want to buffer the file contents into memory. Setting to false will make file.contents a paused Stream.

Type: Boolean

Default: true

options.read

Whether or not you want the file to be read at all. Useful for stuff like removing files. Setting to false will make file.contents null and will disable writing the file to disk via .dest().

Type: Boolean

Default: true

options.since

Only streams files that have been modified since the time specified.

Type: Date or Number

Default: undefined

options.stripBOM

Causes the BOM to be stripped on UTF-8 encoded files. Set to false if you need the BOM for some reason.

Type: Boolean

Default: true

options.passthrough

Allows .src to be used in the middle of a pipeline (using a duplex stream) which passes through all objects received and adds all files globbed to the stream.

Type: Boolean

Default: false

options.sourcemaps

Enables sourcemap support on files passed through the stream. Will load inline sourcemaps and resolve sourcemap links from files. Uses gulp-sourcemaps under the hood.

Type: Boolean

Default: false

options.followSymlinks

Whether or not to recursively resolve symlinks to their targets. Setting to false to preserve them as symlinks and make file.symlink equal the original symlink's target path.

Type: Boolean

Default: true

options.dot

Whether or not you want globs to match on dot files or not (e.g. .gitignore)

Type: Boolean

Default: false

other

Any glob-related options are documented in glob-stream and node-glob. Any through2-related options are documented in through2. Those options are forwarded verbatim.

dest(folder[, options])

Takes a folder path string or a function as the first argument and an options object as the second. If given a function, it will be called with each vinyl File object and must return a folder path. Returns a stream that accepts vinyl File objects, writes them to disk at the folder/cwd specified, and passes them downstream so you can keep piping these around.

Once the file is written to disk, an attempt is made to determine if the stat.mode, stat.mtime and stat.atime of the vinyl File object differ from the file on the filesystem. If they differ and the running process owns the file, the corresponding filesystem metadata is updated. If they don't differ or the process doesn't own the file, the attempt is skipped silently. This functionality is disabled on Windows operating systems or any other OS that doesn't support process.getuid or process.geteuid in node. This is due to Windows having very unexpected results through usage of fs.fchmod and fs.futimes.

If the file has a symlink attribute specifying a target path, then a symlink will be created.

Note: The file will be modified after being written to this stream.

• cwd, base, and path will be overwritten to match the folder.
• stat will be updated to match the file on the filesystem.
• contents will have it's position reset to the beginning if it is a stream.

Options

• Values passed to the options must be of the right type, otherwise they will be ignored.
• All options can be passed a function instead of a value. The function will be called with the vinyl File object as its only argument and must return a value of the right type for the option.

options.cwd

The working directory the folder is relative to.

Type: String

Default: process.cwd()

options.mode

The mode the files should be created with.

Type: Number

Default: The mode of the input file (file.stat.mode) if any, or the process mode if the input file has no mode property.

options.dirMode

The mode the directory should be created with.

Type: Number

Default: The process mode.

options.overwrite

Whether or not existing files with the same path should be overwritten. Can also be a function that takes in a file and returns true or false.

Type: Boolean or Function

Default: true (always overwrite existing files)

options.sourcemaps

Enables sourcemap support on files passed through the stream. Will write inline soucemaps if specified as true. Specifying a string is shorthand for the path option. Uses gulp-sourcemaps under the hood.

Examples:

// Write as inline comments
vfs.dest('./', {
  sourcemaps: true
});

// Write as files in the same folder
vfs.dest('./', {
  sourcemaps: '.'
});

// Any other options are passed through to [gulp-sourcemaps]
vfs.dest('./', {
  sourcemaps: {
    path: '.',
    addComment: false,
    includeContent: false
  }
});

Type: Boolean, String or Object

Default: undefined (do not write sourcemaps)

other

Any through2-related options are documented in through2. Those options are forwarded verbatim.

symlink(folder[, options])

Takes a folder path string or a function as the first argument and an options object as the second. If given a function, it will be called with each vinyl File object and must return a folder path. Returns a stream that accepts vinyl File objects, create a symbolic link (i.e. symlink) at the folder/cwd specified, and passes them downstream so you can keep piping these around.

Note: The file will be modified after being written to this stream.

• cwd, base, and path will be overwritten to match the folder.

Options

• Values passed to the options must be of the right type, otherwise they will be ignored.
• All options can be passed a function instead of a value. The function will be called with the vinyl File object as its only argument and must return a value of the right type for the option.

options.cwd

The working directory the folder is relative to.

Type: String

Default: process.cwd()

options.dirMode

The mode the directory should be created with.

Type: Number

Default: The process mode.

options.relative

Whether or not the symlink should be relative or absolute.

Type: Boolean

Default: false.

other

Any through2-related options are documented in through2. Those options are forwarded verbatim.