Assets

Assets are data structures that essentially represent any output file that isn't a page. An asset might be a CSS file, JavaScript file, image, video, etc.

An Asset data structure only has two pieces of information: a source, and a destination. Both the source and the destination include a file path, and content.

An asset can hold text data or binary data.

Loading Assets

There are two ways to load assets.

First, asset files can be picked using the standard file picking APIs.

For example, the Sass plugin picks all Sass files:

pipeline
  // Load all local Sass files as assets.
  ..pick(ExtensionPicker("sass"))
  ..pick(ExtensionPicker("scss"))

Second, when file picking isn't enough, assets can be loaded with AssetLoaders. This is useful for when an asset comes from a location other than a file.

For example, the website screenshots plugin includes an AssetLoader that takes screenshots of websites during the build process, and makes those screenshots available as assets for the website.

Transforming Assets

Assets can be transformed after they're loaded, by implementing an AssetTransformer.

For example, the Sass plugin includes an AssetTransformer that takes in a Sass file, runs the Sass compiler to turn it into CSS, and then changes the destination path so that the final file has a .css extension instead of a .scss extension.