grunt-available-tasks

Want all of your registered tasks in a nice, alphabetized, colour coded list? Think the task list outputted by grunt --help could be more descriptive? grunt-available-tasks to the rescue!

Install

Install via npm:

npm install grunt-available-tasks --save-dev

Example

module.exports = function(grunt) {
    grunt.initConfig({
        availabletasks: {           // task
            tasks: {}               // target
        }
    });

    grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-available-tasks');
    // Now run the command below on the command line to get your tasks list:
    // grunt availabletasks
};

If you want some further customisation, the options are as follows:

Options

options.tasks

Type: Object Default value: false

The list of tasks to either include or exclude with the filter option.

options.filter

Type: String Default value: false

Define either 'include', or 'exclude'. The filter configuration will override the group, description and sort configurations; so if you have filtered out a task it will not show up in any groups, it won't receive a custom description and it won't appear at the top of your task list. An example configuration:

availabletasks: {
    tasks: {
        options: {
            filter: 'include',
            tasks: ['availabletasks', 'default']
        }
    }
}

options.showTasks

Type: Array Default value: ['single', 'multi', 'user']

Use this option if you would like to show only a subset of the task types. For example if you just want to show the tasks that you have written:

availabletasks: {
    tasks: {
        options: {
            showTasks: ['user']
        }
    }
}

options.groups

Type: Object Default value: {} (empty)

You may choose to group similar tasks if you'd like; note that the same task can appear in multiple groups if you wish. An example configuration:

availabletasks: {
    tasks: {
        options: {
            groups: {
                'Run code validation tasks': ['lintspaces', 'jshint', 'jscs']
            }
        }
    }
}

options.descriptions

Type: Object Default value: {} (empty)

Override any task name, including aliases, with any description that you like. An example configuration:

availabletasks: {
    tasks: {
        options: {
            descriptions: {
                'availabletasks': 'A powerful task list helper for Grunt enabled projects.'
            }
        }
    }
}

options.sort

Type: Boolean|Array Default value: true

Setting this to false will maintain the original sort order for the tasks. true will sort alphabetically, and specifying an array will allow you to do your own custom sorting. An example configuration:

availabletasks: {
    tasks: {
        options: {
            sort: ['lintspaces', 'availabletasks']
        }
    }
}

options.hideUngrouped

Type: Boolean Default value: false

Setting this to true will not output any tasks that haven't been assigned to a group. false will display ungrouped tasks. An example configuration:

availabletasks: {
    tasks: {
        options: {
            hideUngrouped: true
        }
    }
}

options.reporter

Type: String|Function Default value: default

Choose either the default reporter (default) or the Markdown reporter (markdown). Alternately, you can pass a function to this option if you'd like to specify a custom reporter. A simple reporter could look like this:

availabletasks: {
    tasks: {
        options: {
            reporter: function(options) {
                grunt.log.writeln(options.currentTask.name);
            }
        }
    }
}

In this function you are expected to handle group headings and how you'd like the multi task targets to be displayed. The options object that is passed will look something like this:

{
    currentTask: {
        name: 'availabletasks',
        type: '=>',
        info: 'List available Grunt tasks & targets.',
        group: 'Ungrouped'
    },
    meta: {
        taskCount: 2,
        groupCount: 0,
        header: 'Ungrouped', // Only passed when the group has changed
        longest: 14 // The length of the longest task, useful for column padding.
    }
}

See the reporters.js file for the default reporters, which you can take and customise to your liking.

Output

From left to right, this plugin outputs the task name, the type of the task, then the description and finally a list of multitask targets should you have configured two or more. The type of the task is registered with arrows:

• > denotes a single target task.
• -> denotes a multi target task.
• => denotes a user defined task.

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. If you add functionality, then please add unit tests to cover it.

License

MIT © Ben Briggs