npm - How to install grunt and how to build script with it

Question

Hi I'm trying to install Grunt on Windows 7 64 bit. I have installed Grunt using commands

 npm install -g grunt
 npm install -g grunt-cli

but now if I try to do grunt init, it is throwing me an error -

A valid Gruntfile could not be found. Please see the getting started guide for more information on how to configure grunt: http://gruntjs.com/getting-started Fatal error: Unable to find Gruntfile.

But when I look inside the grunt folder on my system the Gruntfile.js is there. can someone please guide me how to install this grunt properly and how to write built Script using the grunt. I have one HTML page and java script if i wants built a script using Grunt how can i do it?

Answer 1

To setup GruntJS build here is the steps:

1. Make sure you have setup your package.json or setup new one:

   npm init
   

2. Install Grunt CLI as global:

   npm install -g grunt-cli
   

3. Install Grunt in your local project:

   npm install grunt --save-dev
   

4. Install any Grunt Module you may need in your build process. Just for sake of this sample I will add Concat module for combining files together:

   npm install grunt-contrib-concat --save-dev
   

5. Now you need to setup your Gruntfile.js which will describe your build process. For this sample I just combine two JS files file1.js and file2.js in the js folder and generate app.js:

   module.exports = function(grunt) {
   
       // Project configuration.
       grunt.initConfig({
           concat: {
               "options": { "separator": ";" },
               "build": {
                   "src": ["js/file1.js", "js/file2.js"],
                   "dest": "js/app.js"
               }
           }
       });
   
       // Load required modules
       grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-contrib-concat');
   
       // Task definitions
       grunt.registerTask('default', ['concat']);
   };
   

6. Now you'll be ready to run your build process by following command:

   grunt
   

I hope this give you an idea how to work with GruntJS build.

NOTE:

You can use grunt-init for creating Gruntfile.js if you want wizard-based creation instead of raw coding for step 5.

To do so, please follow these steps:

npm install -g grunt-init
git clone https://github.com/gruntjs/grunt-init-gruntfile.git ~/.grunt-init/gruntfile
grunt-init gruntfile

For Windows users: If you are using cmd.exe you need to change ~/.grunt-init/gruntfile to %USERPROFILE%.grunt-init. PowerShell will recognize the ~ correctly.