The team has been active working on building out scripts to generate helper libraries for various uses of Material Design Icons. This got me to thinking it might be useful to share how easy these scripts can be to write.
Goal: Write a NodeJS script that takes the @mdi/svg
package and converts it into a easy to view preview.html
.
I picked this since it accesses the meta.json
(this contains all the meta information about each icon, like tags, aliases, etc.) and in the end generates a single html
file.
Prerequisites
- Empty Folder named "preview"
- NodeJS Installed (for
npm
command line)
- Visual Studio Code (or another editor, but my examples will use this)
The NodeJS command line will allow us to pull down some helper scripts and execute our build.js
we'll be writing.
NPM Init
The first step will require you to open a command line of your choice (CTRL+tilde
in VS Code).
- Run
npm init
in your /preview
folder
- Press enter a few times to accept all the defaults.
- Run
npm install @mdi/svg @mdi/util
Awesome, you will now see a folder called node_modules
this contains a copy of the latest version of the SVG's and the meta.json
file.
Note: If you want to see the meta.json
open it and then run CTRL+P
followed by typing format
. This will format the JSON file.
Creating the Build Script
The build.js
file is below. We'll break down what each part does and what the @mdi/util
provides.
const util = require('@mdi/util');
const fileName = "./preview.html";
const version = util.getVersion();
const meta = util.getMeta(true); // withPaths
const body = meta.map(icon => `
<span onClick="a('${icon.name}')"
title="${icon.name}">
<svg viewBox="0 0 24 24">
<path d="${icon.path}" />
</svg>
</span>
`).join('');
const template = `
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Material Design Icons - Preview</title>
<style>
svg { width: 24px; height: 24px }
</style>
<script>
window.a = x => alert(x);
</script>
</head>
<body>
<h1>MDI Preview</h1>
${body}
</body>
</html>
`;
util.write(fileName, template);
console.log(`\u2714 Build ${version}`);
The @mdi/util
includes a few helper methods for working with the @mdi/svg
package's data with NodeJS.
util.getVersion()
Get the semver formatted string major.minor.build
of the current @mdi/svg
release.
util.getMeta(true)
Get the meta.json
data. Passing true will parse the SVG folder for path data assigning it to .path
.
util.write(file, data)
Write data to a file.
util.read(file)
Read data from a file.
View the util.js to understand these utilities.
Update package.json
In the package.json
a new script needs to be added to handle build
.
"scripts": {
"test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1",
"build": "node build.js"
},
To run the build execute npm run build
.
Wrapup
Hopefully you found the above tutorial useful and allows you to create more complex build scripts.