vets.gov-patterns

Vets.gov Pattern library.

Hierarchy

• atoms: basic building blocks, i.e. HTML tags
• molecules: groups of elements, i.e. input form,
• organisms: groups of components forming a relatively complex, distinct section of an interface, i.e. a Nav section
• templates: pages formed by putting together blocks

Developing locally

• Run grunt patternlab:serve from the root of this repo
• When you are done making changes, please merge changes into both master and github-deploy

Deploying to Github pages

• check out the branch github-deploy
• Run grunt
• Add all changes and commit
• run git subtree push --prefix public origin gh-pages
• visit the built PatternLab site at https://department-of-veterans-affairs.github.io/vets.gov-designpattrns/

Pattern Lab

Pattern Lab Node - Grunt Edition

The Grunt wrapper around Pattern Lab Node Core, providing tasks to interact with the core library and move supporting frontend assets.

Packaged Components

The Grunt Edition comes with the following components:

• patternlab-node: GitHub, npm
• patternengine-node-mustache: GitHub, npm
• pattern-lab/styleguidekit-assets-default: GitHub
• pattern-lab/styleguidekit-mustache-default: GitHub

Prerequisites

The Pattern Lab Node - Grunt Edition uses Node for core processing, npm to manage project dependencies, and grunt.js to run tasks and interface with the core library. Node version 4 or higher suffices. You can follow the directions for installing Node on the Node website if you haven't done so already. Installation of Node will include npm.

It's also highly recommended that you install grunt globally.

Installing

There are two methods for downloading and installing the Grunt Edition:

• Download a pre-built package
• Use npm

Download a pre-built package

The fastest way to get started with the Grunt Edition is to download the pre-built version from the releases page. The pre-built project comes with the Base Starterkit for Mustache installed by default.

Please note: Pattern Lab Node uses npm to manage project dependencies. To upgrade the Grunt Edition or to install plug-ins you'll need to be familiar with npm.

Use npm

npm is a dependency management and package system which can pull in all of the Grunt Edition's dependencies for you. To accomplish this:

• download or git clone this repository to an install location.

• run the following

  cd install/location
  npm install
  

Running npm install from a directory containing a package.json file will download all dependencies defined within.

Install the Grunt Edition of Pattern Lab Node as a Dependency

Most people want to run Pattern Lab Node standalone and not as a dependency. If you wish to install as a dependency you can do the following:

Use npm's install command with an argument to install the Grunt Edition into a location of your choosing. In Terminal type:

cd install/location/
npm install edition-node-grunt

This will install the Grunt Edition into a directory called node_modules in install/location/.

Getting started

The Pattern Lab Node - Grunt Edition ships with a base experience which serves as clean place to start from scratch with Pattern Lab. But if you want to get rolling with a starterkit of your own, or use the demo starterkit like the one on demo.patternlab.io, you can do so automatically at time of npm install by adding your starterkit to the package.json file.

You can also work with starterkits using the command line.

Updating Pattern Lab

To update Pattern Lab please refer to each component's GitHub repository, and the master instructions for core. The components are listed at the top of the README.

Helpful Commands

These are some helpful commands you can use on the command line for working with Pattern Lab.

List all of the available commands

To list all available commands type:

grunt patternlab:help

Generate Pattern Lab

To generate the front-end for Pattern Lab type:

grunt patternlab:build

Watch for changes and re-generate Pattern Lab

To watch for changes, re-generate the front-end, and server it via a BrowserSync server, type:

grunt patternlab:serve

BrowserSync should open http://localhost:3000 in your browser.

Install a StarterKit

To install a specific StarterKit from GitHub type:

npm install [starterkit-vendor/starterkit-name]

grunt patternlab:loadstarterkit --kit=[starterkit-name]