freesewing/markdown/dev/howtos/environments/nodejs/en.md

title
FreeSewing in NodeJS

These instructions explain how you can generate patterns in NodeJS. Whether it's in a backend application or on the command line, all it takes is a few lines of code — and a couple of dependencies — to generate a pattern.

Use FreeSewing.org if you just want a pattern

These instructions are intended for people who want to generate their own patterns. If you just want a sewing pattern you can get all our designs on FreeSewing.org, our website for makers.

High level overview

To generate a pattern, you will need to:

• Instantiate the pattern (new ...)
• Pass it the settings and measurements you want to use ({ ... })
• Load the theme plugin (using use())
• Draft the pattern (using draft())
• Render it to SVG (using render())

Which can be done as a one-liner since use(), draft() and render() are all chainable, as shown below.

Code example

import Aaron from '@freesewing/aaron' // Design to use
import theme from '@freesewing/plugin-theme' // SVG theme

const svg = new Aaron( // Instantiate pattern
  { // Pass in settings. See reference > core > settings
    sa: 10, // Seam allowance
    // ... 
    measurements: { // Pass in measurements
      biceps: 387,
      chest: 1105,
      hips: 928,
      hpsToWaistBack: 502,
      neck: 420,
      shoulderSlope: 13,
      shoulderToShoulder: 481,
      waistToHips: 139,
    }
  })
  .use(theme) // Load theme plugin
  .draft() // Draft the pattern
  .render() // Render to SVG

// svg now holds the generated SVG code
console.log(svg)

Remarks on the example code

• We are using @freesewing/aaron as the design, but you could use any design
• You probably want to use your own measurements or you could use @freesewing/models to load measurements from our sizing grid
• We are using @freesewing/plugin-theme to theme our SVG, but you could pass in your own CSS

Dependencies

The code above will only work if you've got the required dependencies installed on your system. Obviously you need NodeJS, but you will also need the following packages:

• @freesewing/core: Our core library
• @freesewing/plugin-bundle: Set of common plugins
• @freesewing/aaron or any design you want to use
• Any design on which the design you choose is built. In this case, Aaron depends on @freesewing/brian
• @freesewing/utils

For the example above, your package.json dependencies section will look like this:

  "dependencies": {
    "@freesewing/core": "latest"
    "@freesewing/aaron": "latest",
    "@freesewing/brian": "latest",
    "@freesewing/models": "latest",
    "@freesewing/plugin-bundle": "latest",
    "@freesewing/plugin-theme": "latest",
    "@freesewing/utils": "latest"
  }