Development Overview

🕐 2 min read

Creation

taco create

Example: taco create my-connector -b earthquake-data

The taco create command also provides git support with option --git. When you provide this option, the taco command automatically sets up the project as a git repository.

Note: Git must be installed before using this option.

Development

Connector source code is under the connector directory, which is an npm project. During the development phase, taco developers mostly work under the connector directory. taco-toolkit provides standard npm support. In the connector directory, three npm scripts are available for developing connectors.

npm run build
npm start
npm run clean

If you prefer working on the TACO project root directory, the TACO CLI also has corresponding commands for the npm scripts.

taco build
taco start
taco clean

Note: if you have multiple TACO projects that depend on different versions of taco-toolkit, we recommended that you use the npm scripts.

Tableau Integration

taco pack

To run the connector with Tableau apps, a connector must be packed into a .taco file. You, as a TACO developer, can run the taco pack command in the root directory of a TACO project.

The taco pack command does three things:

Preparation: creating TACO XML files (according to the configurations in the connector.json file)
Validation: validate the connector.json and XML files are set up properly
Packaging: generate .taco file

In some scenarios, you might need to manually modify the TACO XML files for customization. The following options are provided:

Option	Description
`--prepare`	When this option is present, `taco pack` only performs the prepare stage. You can use the command to create the initial TACO files for customization.
`--validate`	When this option is present, `taco pack` only performs the validate stage. You can use the command to validate if your TACO files are set up properly.
`--skip-prepare`	When this option is present, `taco pack` doesn’t generate the TACO files, which allows you to pack the customized TACO files into the `.taco` file.

Note: The TACO project must be built before packing. Developers may use taco build --clean to make sure the project has a clean build.

taco run

Example:

taco run Desktop --version 2022.3

The command launches a Tableau app with your TACO connector. By default, the command looks for .taco files under the current directory. You can use the --taco-dir option to specify a directory that contains .taco files.