How to pass arguments to grunt task? - copy

Question

I want to refactor my grunt copy task to not repeat the same files over and over for multiple sub tasks. It looks like this right now:
"copy":
{
"web-debug":
{
files:
[
{ src: "libs/1st/**/*", dest: config.buildWebDebugOutPath },
{ src: "libs/3rd/**/*", dest: config.buildWebDebugOutPath },
{ src: "assets/**/*", dest: config.buildWebDebugOutPath },
{ src: "shared/**/*", dest: config.buildWebDebugOutPath },
{ src: "client/**/*", dest: config.buildWebDebugOutPath },
]
},
"web-release":
{
files:
[
{ src: "libs/1st/**/*", dest: config.buildWebReleaseOutPath },
{ src: "libs/3rd/**/*", dest: config.buildWebReleaseOutPath },
{ src: "assets/**/*", dest: config.buildWebReleaseOutPath },
{ src: "shared/**/*", dest: config.buildWebReleaseOutPath },
{ src: "client/**/*", dest: config.buildWebReleaseOutPath },
]
},
Ideally, I just have one copy task that takes a path argument that I can pass to it from an alias task like this:
//
// Let's assume I renamed "web-debug" to "web-files"
//
grunt.registerTask("web-debug", ["web-files:<some debug path>"]);
grunt.registerTask("web-release", ["web-files:<some release path>"]);
What's the simplest way of doing this?
How would I access this passed in argument within the task itself?

Answer 1

You can use templates, as described in this Dynamic Grunt Targets Using Templates blog post. In the context of your code, it might look like this:
"copy":
{
"web-files":
{
files:
[
{ src: "libs/1st/**/*", dest: "<%= grunt.task.current.args[0] %>" },
{ src: "libs/3rd/**/*", dest: "<%= grunt.task.current.args[0] %>" },
{ src: "assets/**/*", dest: "<%= grunt.task.current.args[0] %>" },
{ src: "shared/**/*", dest: "<%= grunt.task.current.args[0] %>" },
{ src: "client/**/*", dest: "<%= grunt.task.current.args[0] %>" },
]
}
You could pass in either the full path or just a partial "debug" or "release" path segment.