LaxarJS 2 Yeoman Generator

The convenient way to scaffold a new LaxarJS 2.x application, widget or control.

Note: This generator produces code that works with LaxarJS version 2.x. If you need to create widgets or controls for an application running LaxarJS in version 1.x, you'll have to use generator-laxarjs instead.

Installation

Simply install the generator package and optionally yeoman globally via npm.

npm install -g yo generator-laxarjs2

Generators

The Yeoman generator laxarjs2 comes up with the main generator for scaffolding an application and three sub-generators for widgets, activities and controls.

Available generators:

• laxarjs2
• laxarjs2:widget
• laxarjs2:activity
• laxarjs2:control

Keep in mind that the sub-generators expect to find a Yeoman configuration file (.yo-rc.json) in the root directory of your application. So when calling the generator for the application first, this will already create the configuration file. In case you add widgets, activities or controls to an application that was created without Yeoman, simply create the file with an empty object as content.

echo "{}" > .yo-rc.json

Application

To scaffold a new LaxarJS application, create a directory and run the generator:

mkdir my-application
cd my-application
yo laxarjs2

After answering several questions, the generator creates the bare-bones application scaffolding for you. Alternatively you can choose to let the generator create a set of very simple exemplary widgets in the application. When choosing this option, a widget is created for every selected integration technology. Additionally, a widget written in plain JavaScript is added, since this is always part of LaxarJS.

Next, all dependencies can be installed by running npm install (or yarn), and after that is finished, the development web server can be started by running npm start;

Command Line Options

--banner <banner-file.txt>

By using this option a text file containing a custom header for source files can be configured. When the generator creates a new source file (.js, .ts, .jsx or .vue), this will be added as header just before the actual code starts.

This option will be saved in the Yeoman configuration file and will be used by sub-generators.

Widget, Activity and Control

The scaffolding for a widget can be generated by simply running the following in the root directory of the application ($applicationRoot):

yo laxarjs2:widget

The widget will be created in $applicationRoot/application/widgets/$widgetName. If the generator is not run in the application's root directory, but some other sub-directory, the widget will be created directly in that directory.

To create an activity or a control, simply use the appropriate sub-generator

# create an activity
yo laxarjs2:activity
# create a control
yo laxarjs2:control

By default activities will be created in the same folder as widgets, and control will be created in $applicationRoot/application/controls/$controlName. Note that while for widgets and controls the next time one of these artifacts should be created the last selected integration technology will be pre-selected, the default for activities will always be plain. This is because any view rendering technology would only add bloat, since a view isn't rendered by an activity anyways. A valid exception could for example be the reuse of an AngularJS service within the activity controller.

Command Line Options

<artifact-name>

This will initialize the question for the name of the artifact with this value.

--banner <banner-file.txt>

This is the same as explained above for the application generator.

--directory <artifacts-directory>

The generator will create the widget, activity or control in a sub-directory of the directory that was provided using this option. Name of the sub-directory is the name of the artifact.

Example:

my-app $ yo laxarjs2:widget hello-world-widget --directory stuff/my-widgets

This will create the widget in my-app/stuff/my-widgets/hello-world-widget.