joshuamccall.com | joshmccall221 | joshmccall

Writing Articles with Plop

This gitbook uses Plop to scaffold new articles. Here's how to create a new article:

Quick Start

npm run new

What You'll Be Asked

Plop will prompt you for three pieces of information:

link? - The URL or reference link for your article (can be left blank)
Article name? - The name of your article (required)
Draft? - Whether this is a draft (y/n)

What Gets Created

When you run npm run new, plop will:

Create a new article file in articles/.md
Create a summary entry file in plop/:
- plop/article_.md (if not a draft)
- plop/draft_.md (if marked as draft)

Building Your SUMMARY.md

After creating articles, run the build process to update your table of contents:

npm run go

This command will:

Recreate SUMMARY.md
Collect all article entries from plop/article_* files
Collect all draft entries from plop/draft_* files
Append them to SUMMARY.md
Clean up the temporary plop files
Build the gitbook
Copy keybase.txt to docs
Show git status

Complete Workflow Example

# Create a new article

<!-- toc -->

- [Answer the prompts:](#answer-the-prompts)
- [link? https://example.com/my-article](#link-httpsexamplecommy-article)
- [Article name? My Awesome Article](#article-name-my-awesome-article)
- [Draft? n](#draft-n)
- [Build and update everything](#build-and-update-everything)
- [Serve locally to preview](#serve-locally-to-preview)

<!-- tocstop -->

npm run new
# Answer the prompts:
# link? https://example.com/my-article
# Article name? My Awesome Article
# Draft? n

# Build and update everything
npm run go

# Serve locally to preview
npm run serve

Development Commands

npm run serve - Serve the gitbook locally
npm run build - Build the gitbook to ./docs
npm run new - Create a new article with plop
npm run go - Full build process (summary + build + cleanup)

README