denodify

Working, but needs testing...

Organize javascript on the browser using the nodejs module system.

Much simpler version than browserify, modules don't get bundled for instance, nor is there any plugin system browserifying all and sundry.

Install:

npm install denodify

To see the thing in action clone this repo.

First, for the coffeescript example make sure you have the coffee executable installed, eg:

sudo apt-get install coffeescript

Then:

npm install

This will also install a demo server. Run

bin/serve

and open devtools to see denodify in action.

Use:

Add src/denodify.js to your sites javascript directory and load the file on your web page.

Wrap your javascript:

denodify('my_module_id',function(require, module, exports, __filename, __dirname, process) {"
	require('another_module');
    [more source code]
    module.exports = { bla: 123 }
})

Load your module and its dependencies with:

var exported = denodify.require('my_module_id); // { bla: 123 }

The order in which you load your nodejs modules doesn't matter as long as they are all loaded by the time you make your denodify.require call.

If you identify modules by their path from the server's root directory, and start paths with a slash, you can require files within the same directory with relative paths, just as in nodejs.

You can already do require('path') since I use it to resolve paths in denodify.

I will add more standard nodejs modules as I see a need for them, url for instance

You should be able to add any nodejs module as long as it doesn't use any specific server side technology, such as file io for instance.

I use this with html-builder and bb-server. I can add a module and the proper script tags for all dependencies get inserted and the source gets automatically wrapped with the proper modules ids. This should even work if I write a module in a language other than javascript but supported by bb-server. The combination of denodify with the server and builder in effect achieves the same goal as all the browserify plugins, however for development purposes the files don't need to get bundled and then source mapped since they can stay separate. Bb-server automatically concatenates (and minifies and gzips and caches) all source files and modules (including ones that need to be transpiled) in production mode.

src/denodify-helper is a nodejs file that provides some functions to wrap source code and to get a list of dependencies for a given module file. It returns the list ordered by dependency resolution (superfluous) and gives a warning when it detects a circular dependency. If modules relied directly on each other the order would matter, but a loaded file only registers its source code and that can happen in any order as long as it happens before the denodify.require call.

Add denodify-helper to your module:

var denodify = require('denodify');

This is a very simple, but quite effective system, much better and easier than the old script injecting libraries like require.js or my own bootstrapjs. And you get nodejs module compatibility for free.

See also denodefiy documentation. and denodefiy-helper documentation.

TODO:

• write tests
• Add standard nodejs modules such as url (see browserify)
• Implement use of deputy for caching detective investigations