The laxar-artifacts Task

For a given flow target, collects all reachable artifacts and produce an artifacts model in JSON format.

The generated artifacts model serves as a base for many other tasks and is very useful for tooling and inspection.

The artifacts model is stored under {dest}/{target}/tooling/artifacts.json. Here, dest refers to the configured destination directory (usually var/flows), and target corresponds to the flow target that was specified when running the task.

There is one top-level key in the artifacts model for each type of artifact: flows, themes, pages (including compositions), layouts, widgets and controls. The value of each of these top-level entries is a list of corresponding artifact items. The individual attributes of an artifact item depend on the type of artifact, but all items have a resources entry, and many also have a path and/or references.

Artifact Resources

Each artifact that is part of the artifacts model has associated resources which play a role for processing by subsequent tasks. There are several sets of such resources, which may overlap. The resources attribute of each artifact item contains these sets by name, each being represented as an array of strings, which are file paths or glob-patterns. Patterns starting with '/' must be interpreted relative to the project root, while other patterns are relative to the artifact's path. Not that there do not actually have to exist any files matching these paths; these are just the paths where the LaxarJS runtime and tasks will be able to pick them up.

Artifact Resources: embed

Any embed resources of an artifact will possibly be downloaded by the LaxarJS runtime, using the axFileResourceProvider service. Actually existing files that match these resources will be textually embedded by the laxar-resources task into the file resources.json, so that the runtime can access their contents without any delay.

For widgets, this list includes the widget.json, any HTML templates (local to the widget, or provided externally by a theme), and anything specified in the widget.json under resources.embed.
For controls, this list includes the control.json, and anything specified in the control.json under resources.embed.

Note that embed implies list (see below).

Artifact Resources: list

Any list resources of an artifact will possibly be checked for availability by the LaxarJS runtime, using the axFileResourceProvider service. Actual files corresponding to these resources will be listed by the task laxar-resources in the file resources.json so that the runtime can determine their availability without producing HTML 404 errors. These resources might be downloaded (if they actually exist), for example by a runtime-generated link element, in order to load a stylesheet.

For widgets, this list includes any CSS stylesheets (local to the widget, or provided externally by a theme), and anything specified in the widget.json under resources.list.
For controls, this list includes any CSS stylesheets (local to the control, or provided externally by a theme), anything specified in the control.json under resources.list.

Note that any embed resources belong are implicitly list resources as well.

Artifact Resources: watch

Any watch resources indicate file locations that are observed by the development server. These resources are processed by laxar-configure-watch to configure the grunt watch task. Changes to these resources will be live-reloaded if the development server is used.

For widgets, this list includes the implementation module, any of the default list and embed resources (see above) as well as anything specified in the widget.json under resources.watch.
For controls, this list includes the implementation module, any of the default list and embed resources (see above) as well as anything specified in the control.json under resources.watch.

To watch all JavaScript files of a widget that you are developing, you could simply add an entry "*.js" to the resources.watch entry of the widget.json.

Overview

Note: This task is an internal building block used by the grunt-laxar main tasks, and not considered a part of the stable API.

Run this task with the grunt laxar-configure laxar-artifacts:target command.