MetaEd can be operated directly through Node.js for continuous integration scenarios. These instructions are intended for software engineering tasks, and can be ignored when strictly using MetaEd from the IDE.

1. Create a Node Project

Initialize a new Node project and install dependency metaed-console from the Ed-Fi registry,

https://pkgs.dev.azure.com/ed-fi-alliance/Ed-Fi-Alliance-OSS/_packaging/EdFi/npm/registry/

2. Build Without Deploy

Run the following command from the project directory to see all command line options:

node .\node_modules\@edfi\metaed-console\dist\index.js -h

This command doesn't give you much help, admittedly, so let's look at a full example with a config file. Note that the install of atom-metaed will have loaded relevant data model files into the node_modules directory, and you can reference those projects directly as shown in this config file under projectPaths.

{
  "metaEdConfiguration": {
    "projects": [
      {
        "namespaceName": "EdFi",
        "projectName": "Ed-Fi",
        "projectVersion": "3.3.1-b",
        "projectExtension": "",
        "description": "The Ed-Fi Data Model 3.3b"
      },
      {
        "namespaceName": "Homograph",
        "projectName": "Homograph",
        "projectVersion": "1.0.0",
        "projectExtension": "homograph",
        "description": "The homograph extension data model"
      }
    ],
    "projectPaths": [
      ".\node_modules\\@edfi\\ed-fi-model-3.3b",
      "C:\\source\\ed-fi\\ed-fi-ods-implementation\\Extensions\\Homograph\\HomographMetaEd"
    ],
    "defaultPluginTechVersion": "5.3.0"
  }
}

Now, to run the build:

node .\node_modules\@edfi\metaed-console\dist\index.js -c .\your-config.json -a

The output log will provide details on any errors, and you can check for exit code 1 to fail a build process.

The -a flag is for accepting the Ed-Fi license agreement, and it is new in MetaEd 4.0.

Build Output

The build process creates the following outputs:

Documentation - data dictionary, HTML handbook, Excel handbook
Metadata used by the ODS/API code generation
SQL scripts (both SQL Server and PostgreSQL)
XML/XSD files for bulk upload processes

Output Directory structure

<artifactDirectory>
   └─ Documentation
      └─ DataDictionary
      └─ Ed-Fi-Handbook
      └─ UDM
   └─ EdFi
      └─ ApiMetadata
      └─ Database
      └─ Interchange
      └─ XSD

3. Build and Deploy

In this scenario, you are not only building, but also deploying the output into an extension project in the Ed-Fi-ODS-Implementation repository for use by the ODS/API Platform build process. Thus you must have an extension project (csproj file) in an appropriate directory. In this example, the Homograph project files are saved in Ed-Fi-ODS-Implementation\Application\EdFi.Ods.Extensions.Homograph (do not need the Artifacts directory, because those files will be replaced by this deploy process).

Run the following command from the project directory to see all command line options. Note that this is a different package than the one used above.

node .\node_modules\@edfi\metaed-odsapi-deploy\dist\index.js -h

Although this command has more switches available for operation with a config file, we can reuse the file above with a few additions.

{
  "metaEdConfiguration": {
    "artifactDirectory": "C:\\source\\ed-fi\\MetaEd-Js\\build\\MetaEdOutput",
    "deployDirectory": "c:\\source\\ed-fi",
    "projects": [
      {
        "namespaceName": "EdFi",
        "projectName": "Ed-Fi",
        "projectVersion": "3.3.1-b",
        "projectExtension": "",
        "description": "The Ed-Fi Data Model 3.3b"
      },
      {
        "namespaceName": "Homograph",
        "projectName": "Homograph",
        "projectVersion": "1.0.0",
        "projectExtension": "homograph",
        "description": "The homograph extension data model"
      }
    ],
    "projectPaths": [
      ".\node_modules\\@edfi\\ed-fi-model-3.3b",
      "C:\\source\\ed-fi\\ed-fi-ods-implementation\\Extensions\\Homograph\\HomographMetaEd"
    ],
    "defaultPluginTechVersion": "5.3.0"
  }
}

The deployDirectory needs to be the parent directory containing Ed-Fi-ODS-Implementation. You cannot clone the Implementation repository into a directory with a different name unless you have symlinks setup for aliasing.

Alternately, you can run without a config file, with only the command line switches. Interestingly, you don't need to specify the artifactDirectory or projects when you take this approach.

node .\node_modules\@edfi\metaed-odsapi-deploy\dist\index.js `
	-s .\node_modules\@edfi\ed-fi-model-3.3b\ `
	-s C:\source\ed-fi\ed-fi-ods-implementation\Extensions\Homograph\HomographMetaEd\ `
	-t C:\source\ed-fi\ `
    -a

Deploy Output

<deployDirectory>
   └─ Ed-Fi-ODS
      └─ Standard
         └─ Metadata
      └─ Database
         └─ Data
            └─ EdFi
         └─ Structure
            └─ EdFi
      └─ Database
         └─ Schemas
            └─ Interchange
            └─ XSD
   └─ Ed-Fi-ODS-Implementation
      └─ Application
         └─ EdFi.Ods.Standard
            └─ SupportingArtifacts
               └─ Metadata
                  └─ ApiModel.json