Run Gulp 4 tasks programmatically from NodeJS

I want to use the power of the Gulp functions like the series(), parallel(), src(), dest(), pipe(), the globbing, an the plugin model within my node application. And it is easy to do. But I can tell you… it took me hours to find out, and the missing link was that I forgot two brackets: (). The gulp.series() and gulp.parallel() give back a function that must be executed:

const {series} = require('gulp');

// simple gulp task
const helloTask = done => {
  console.log('hello from helloTask');
  done();
}

console.log('start');
series(helloTask)();
console.log('end');

The import part is series(helloTask)(). But the output was still in the wrong order:

start
end
hello from helloTask

This is because everything in Gulp is asynchronous. We need to wait for the completion of the series before continuing. This can be achieved using a promise, and awaiting the promise. If we want to await a promise we need to execute that code from an async function:

const gulp = require('gulp');

// simple gulp task
const helloTask = done => {
  console.log('hello from helloTask');
  done();
}

async function gulpTaskRunner(task) {
  return new Promise(function (resolve, reject) {
    gulp.series(task, (done) => {
      console.log("Gulp task completed");
      resolve();
      done();
    })();
  });
}

async function app() {
  console.log('start');
  await gulpTaskRunner(helloTask);
  console.log('end');
}

app();

In this way we can create a simple gulpTaskRunner() function that can be executed from within your node application.

And the output is now as follows:

start
hello from helloTask
Gulp task completed
end

Personal blog by Serge van den Oever - als je maar lol hebt...
X: @svdoever
LinkedIn: Serge van den Oever - articles on LinkedIn
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Technology Consultant @ Macaw
2021-2024 Sitecore Technology MVP