angular-cn/aio/tools/example-zipper

Overview

In the AIO application, we offer the reader the option to download each example as a full self-contained runnable project packaged as a zip file. These zip files are generated by the utility in this folder.

Example zipper

The exampleZipper.js tool is very similar to the Plunker's builder.js. The latter creates an HTML file with all the examples' files and the former creates a zip file instead. They both use the plnkr.json file to flag an example as something to plunker or zip. For example:

{
  "description": "Tour of Heroes: Part 6",
  "basePath": "src/",
  "files":[
    "!**/*.d.ts",
    "!**/*.js",
    "!**/*.[1,2].*"
  ],
  "tags": ["tutorial", "tour", "heroes", "http"]
}

The zipper will use this information for creating new zips.

Three kinds of examples

The majority of examples in AIO use System.js but there are also CLI and Webpack projects. This tool is able to differentiate between them.

The boilerplate uses a package.json that contains packages and scripts to run any kind of example. Using that package.json in the zips would confuse the users.

Thanks to the package.json customizer, we can create a new package.json on the fly that would only contain the packages and scripts needed to run that example.

The exampleZipper.js won't include any System.js related files for CLI or Webpack projects.

The package.json customizer

Given a type, this tool will populate a package.json file customized for that type.

Here you find a:

• base.json - All the common scripts and packages
• cli.json - Extra scripts and packages for the CLI
• webpack.json - Extra scripts and packages for Webpack
• systemjs.json - All the System.js related packages but it also contains the remainder scripts that are not in the other files.

The tool will also give some standard names to the scripts.

The zipper.json

As mentioned, the tool uses the plnkr.json as a flag and also a configuration file for the zipper. The problem is that not all examples have a plunker but they could offer a zip instead.

In those cases, you can create a zipper.json file with the same syntax. It will be ignored by the plunker tool.

Choosing the zip "type"

In both plnkr.json and zipper.json you can use two extra properties for the zipper configuration:

{
  ...
  "removeSystemJsConfig": true,
  "type": "webpack"
}

This would generate a zip for a webpack application and it will also remove everything related with SystemJS.

Executing the zip generation

generateZips.js will create a zip for each plnkr.json or zipper.json it finds.

Where? At src/generated/zips/.

Then the <live-example> embedded component will look at this folder to get the zip it needs for the example.