YEOMAN in a nutshell - quick easy guide

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Here are the KEY points you should know to quickly learn Yeoman Generator.

1. You need to know - Javascript and module export feature.
2. 'generator' - is unfortunately a KEYWORD - which you should be using very unconventionally to your surprise.

Here are the places you must use 'generator' keyword.

 Let us say your project name going to be - "myappcodegenerator", now,
  1. The app "Foder / Directory Name should HAVE the prefix : "generator-" .
    1. As per your example project the Folder name should be - "generator-myappcodegenerator"
  2. And inside this folder create a package.json (You can do it by 'npm init')
  3. You have to Edit package.json to change the value fo 'name:' to "generator-myappcodegenerator'
  4. Then to keep it simple  create a folder -  'generators' .
  5. Inside 'generator-myappcodegenerator/generators' folder, you will put your code, the default executable file would be 'index.js'. So create an 'index.js' file.
  6. Inside 'index.js' include yeoman generator.
    var Generator  = require('yeoamn-generator');
  7. Then export your class like, module.exports  = class extends Generator {}
  8. Then to keep it simple, add a simple function,  myfunction() { this.log('method 1 just ran'); } - You must use 'this.log' instead of console.log - for reasons 'this' is the context of the yeoman-generator and you get to manipulate log info in your own user interface than console.log which uses systems console context.
  9. Now do a step before you run (to map your local folder to global node packages - you will get it later) run this command : npm link 
  10. Now to run the code (to generate) - this time, you only use the project name with out 'generator-' , ie. 'yo myappcodegenerator'
These are the tricky basics in yeoman generator.  I know you would like to have a generator for yeoman file structure!

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