Compiling sass with gulp using NodeJS
Posted By : Arun Kumar | 02-Feb-2016
Gulp : Gulp is a task runner which can automate the many build tasks such as css preprocessing,minification,live reloading and many more.
Pre-requisite : Node.js must be installed on your machine.
Note: We will be installing gulp and express in the project directory ,not globally for this tutorial.
Step 1: Create a project directory and create a package.json file in it.
package.json can also be created automatically by using the command prompt by the command "npm init" .
Step 2; Install express.
In the command prompt type in "npm install --save-dev express". This will install express framework with in a node_modules folder inside your project directory.
We will be using express to run the server for this tutorial.
Step 3: Install gulp
In the command prompt type in "npm install --save-dev gulp" to install gulp in the project directory.
Step 4: Install sass compiler.
In the command prompt type in "npm install --save-dev gulp-sass" to install the sass compiler.
Step 5:Now create two directories one for sass and the other one for css.We are going to name them "sass" and "css".
Step 6: Create a Gulpfile.js in the root directory of the project and paste in the following code.
var gulp = require('gulp');
var sass = require('gulp-sass');
gulp.task('express', function() {
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
app.use(express.static(__dirname));
app.listen(4000, '0.0.0.0'); });
gulp.task('styles', function() {
gulp.src('sass/**/*.scss')
.pipe(sass().on('error', sass.logError))
.pipe(gulp.dest('./css/'));
});
gulp.task('default', ['styles', 'express'], function() {
});
Step 7: Create a index.html file for a webpreview and paste in the following html code.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
Hello World!
</body>
</html>
Step 8: Now run command: gulp from the command prompt and this will run your server.
Start typing your sass code inside a sass file in the sass folder and it will get compiled to a css file inside the css folder.
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About Author
Arun Kumar
Arun is a creative UI Developer