SFDX - What is the correct way to add new files to project directory structure?

Question

Say I create an SFDX project with sfdx force:project:create...

it creates a directory structure, including a folder structure to hold all the development metadata: [ProjectName]\main\default

Now, when I'm pulling metadata from an org (scratch or sandbox) directly into the project using CLI, it does a handy job of sorting the metadata categories into folders. Within the default folder, it will create an objects folder, layouts folder, classes folder, etc, all automatically.

HOWEVER, when I use CLI to create metadata directly inside my project, like say an apex class, I need to specify the destination directory.

I'm wondering... is it important that I know the automatically created folder structure for my metadata components when it comes to deploying my project? Can I just stick all my files in main without worrying about category folders? Is there a way to generate the desired folder structure for my project at the time of creating the apex class, without manually creating the classes folder myself?

Answer 1

Good questions. Can you work without the folders - perhaps. Think you will have to experiment and check that the push/pull to/from as scratch org works fine and that the sfdx force:source:convert to move to MDAPI format for deployments into non-scratch orgs works fine.

The sfdx-falcon-template project breaks the tree up in a way that suggests there may be flexibility. But pulls from a scratch org always go into the default tree. This is an example of the trouble you can run into when not using the de-facto conventions because the tools are primarily used and tested by people following those conventions.

We use the conventional folder names when using SFDX. Pretty easy to do through e.g. VSCode.