connect-assets-jspaths

An NPM module for outputting your connect-assets javascript assets. Useful for working with requireJS.

Problems This Helps With

• You're using requireJS and need to update the location of your modules after they have become minified and hashed.
• You're using requireJS and need to get the url of a particular file to add as the data-main attribute of your script reference.

Installation

npm install connect-assets-jspaths

• Note, there is a dependency on CoffeeScript.

Server Side Usage

assets = require "connect-assets"
jsPaths = require "connect-assets-jspaths"

# Snip ...

app.use assets()
# Exports the global function exportPaths() and jsUrl(); see below in View Helpers.
jsPaths assets

# Optionally, pass a log function to see progress
# jsPaths assets, console.log

Watch changes and re-compile

Now you can pass some additional callbacks in and it will monitor your connect assets directories for changes.

fileChangedCallback = (err, filePath) ->
    console.log "File Changed: #{filePath}"

jsPaths assets, console.log, fileChangedCallback, (err, watcher) ->
    console.log "Watcher initialized"

NOTE You'll probably want to disable this for production mode.

View Usage

This module exports two global functions exportPaths() and jsUrl().

// Using this in your view
!= exportPaths("jsPaths")

// Turns into this when rendered in production
<script type="text/javascript">
    var jsPaths = { "main", "/builtAssets/js/main.13819282742.js" /* snip all the other file paths */ };
</script>


// Using this in your view
- var mainJsPath = jsUrl("/js/main.js")
script(type="text/javascript", data-main="#{mainJsPath}", src="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/require.js/2.0.2/require.min.js")    

// Turns into this when rendered in production
<script type="text/javascript" data-main="/builtAssets/js/main.13819282742.js" src="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/require.js/2.0.2/require.min.js"></script>

Dynamic RequireJS Paths

Now that we have a variable with our requireJS friendly paths in it, we can set those paths in the RequireJS config

# Example main.coffee file in /assets/js folder

requirePaths =
  paths:
    jquery: "//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.2/jquery.min"
    underscore: "//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/underscore.js/1.3.3/underscore-min"
    backbone: "//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/backbone.js/0.9.2/backbone-min"
    text: "/js/lib/text"
    handlebars: "/js/lib/handlebars"
    
if jsPaths
  for own key, value of jsPaths
    # Fix up the lib references
    key = key.slice 4 if key.slice(0, 4) == "lib/"
    requirePaths.paths[key] = value 

require.config
  paths: requirePaths.paths

  shim:
    jquery:
      exports: "$"
    underscore:
      exports: "_"
    backbone:
      deps: ["underscore", "jquery"]
      exports: "Backbone"
    
require ['app'], (App) ->
    new App().initialize()

Copyright

Created by Jacob Gable. MIT License; no attribution required.