Node Intellij Jetbrains Module, Easily generate Intellij Project in node

Want to easily create Intellij Project files for your Node project?  Use the npm jetbrains module and set up a simple script in package.json.

Before you do this it's a good idea to install the Node Plugin for Intellij and set up Code completion for Node.  I wrote up a how to do this at http://www.whiteboardcoder.com/2015/04/intellij-and-node.html if you have not done it yet.

.gitignore

Make sure you .gititnore file will ignore Intellij Files

> vi .gitignore

Here is a my .gitignore file.  The highlighted section is the Intellij portion.

#Intellij *.iml .idea/ # Linux .directory *~ # OS X .DS_Store* Icon? ._* # vim swap and backups *.swp *~ #Heroku Procfile # npm node_modules .grunt npm-debug.log

Install Jetbrains module

From your Node application folder run the following commands.

> npm install --save-dev jetbrains

You could run the following command to create the .idea folders.

> node_modules/jetbrains/cli.js init

But there is a better way for your project.  Make it a callable script in the package.json file."

Edit the package.json file

> vi package.json

And add a script.  (I am only showing the script section of my package.json file)

"scripts": {     "test": "mocha --recursive test",     "gen-idea": "node node_modules/jetbrains/cli.js init"   },

From the command line you can run

> npm run gen-idea

An .idea folder with it's files should have been created.  And if you check git status it should be ignored J

The script call can be better

You can make the script call clearer, and shorter, in package.json

Change it to.

> vi package.json

"scripts": {     "test": "mocha --recursive test",     "gen-idea": "jetbrains init"   },

Run the script again (You may need to remove the .idea folder first)

> sudo rm -r .idea   > npm run gen-idea

Why does this work? 

Poking around I found https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/run-script [1]

Looks like when you add a module a link is created in the node_modules/.bin folder.

> ls -alh node_modules/.bin/

jetbrains links to -> ../jetbrains/cli.js

npm add node_modules/.bin to the PATH provided to the scripts.

So that works…

How does it know what to link to jetbrains links to cli.js?

Run this command

> cat node_modules/jetbrains/package.json | grep -A 5 bin

You will see that the "bin" section defines the links to create.

If I run

> cat node_modules/mocha/package.json | grep -A 5 bin

I can see the mocha package defines two variables to link in the bin section.

Cool that is a good thing to know J

References

[1]        Run arbitrary package scripts

 https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/run-script

                Accessed 5/2015