BabelJS - Working with BabelJS and Gulp

In this chapter, we will create project setup using babel and gulp. Gulp is a task runner that uses Node.js as a platform. Gulp will run the tasks that will transpile JavaScript files from es6 to es5 and once done will start the server to test the changes. We have used babel 6 in the project setup. In case you want to switch to babel 7, install the required packages of babel using @babel/babel-package-name.

We will create the project first using npm commands and install the required packages to start with.

command

npm init

Babel Package Name.

We have created a folder called gulpbabel. Further, we will install gulp and other required dependencies.

command

npm install gulp --save-dev
npm install gulp-babel --save-dev
npm install gulp-connect --save-dev
npm install babel-preset-env --save-dev
npm install babel-core --save-dev

Install Gulp

We will add the Preset environment details to .babelrc file as follows

Preset Environment Details

gulpfile.js

var gulp =require('gulp');
var babel =require('gulp-babel');
var connect = require("gulp-connect");
gulp.task('build', () => {
   gulp.src('src/./*.js')
      .pipe(babel())
      .pipe(gulp.dest('./dev'))
});

gulp.task('watch', () => {
   gulp.watch('./*.js', ['build']);
});

gulp.task("connect", function () {
   connect.server({
      root: ".",
      livereload: true
   });
});

gulp.task('start', ['build', 'watch', 'connect']);

We have created three task in gulp, [‘build’,’watch’,’connect’]. All the js files available in src folder will be converted to es5 using babel as follows −

gulp.task('build', () => {
   gulp.src('src/./*.js')
      .pipe(babel())
      .pipe(gulp.dest('./dev'))
});

The final changes are stored in the dev folder. Babel uses presets details from .babelrc. In case you want to change to some other preset, you can change the details in .babelrc file.

Now will create a .js file in src folder using es6 javascript and run gulp start command to execute the changes.

src/main.js

class Person {
   constructor(fname, lname, age, address) {
      this.fname = fname;
      this.lname = lname;
      this.age = age;
      this.address = address;
   }

   get fullname() {
      return this.fname +"-"+this.lname;
   }
}

Command: gulp start

Command Gulp Start

dev/main.js

This is transpiled using babel −

"use strict";

var _createClass = function () {
   function defineProperties(target, props) { 
      for (var i = 0; i <props.length; i++) { 
         var descriptor = props[i]; 
         descriptor.enumerable = descriptor.enumerable || false; 
         descriptor.configurable = true; 
         if ("value" in descriptor) descriptor.writable = true; 
         Object.defineProperty(target, descriptor.key, descriptor); 
      } 
   } 
   return function (Constructor, protoProps, staticProps) { 
      if (protoProps) defineProperties(Constructor.prototype, protoProps); 
      if (staticProps) defineProperties(Constructor, staticProps); 
      return Constructor; 
   }; 
}();

function _classCallCheck(instance, Constructor) {
   if (!(instance instanceof Constructor)) { 
      throw new TypeError("Cannot call a class as a function"); 
   } 
}

var Person = function () {
   function Person(fname, lname, age, address) {
      _classCallCheck(this, Person);
      this.fname = fname;
      this.lname = lname;
      this.age = age;
      this.address = address;
   }
   _createClass(Person, [{
      key: "fullname",
      get: function get() {
         return this.fname + "-" + this.lname;
      }
   }]);

   return Person;
}();

Index.html

This is done using transpiled dev/main.js −

<html>
   <head></head>
   <body>
      <script type="text/javascript" src="dev/main.js"></script>
      <h1 id="displayname"></h1>
      <script type="text/javascript">
         var a = new Student("Siya", "Kapoor", "15", "Mumbai");
         var studentdet = a.fullname;
         document.getElementById("displayname").innerHTML = studentdet;
      </script>
   </body>
</html>

Output

Transpiled Dev Output
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