envarconst

Make JavaScript const variable.

The Idea

UglifyJS and probably other minifiers remove dead code, when a const has a value, which is used in an if statement elsewhere. For example:

const ES5 = true;
if (ES5){
	console.log("I have ES5 features");
} else {
	console.log("I'm an old browser");
}

minifies to simply:

console.log("I have ES5 features");

Now we can use this, to make, say, a mobile version, with mobile specific code, or special code for development, with DEV code.

However, eventually, you want to deploy to production, or to another environment target, so the const values have to change, from const DEV = true, to const DEV = false, so all if (DEV){ ... } code is removed.

cat es5.js | envarconst -d ES5=false | uglifyjs -m -c

results in:

console.log("I'm an old browser");

envarconst helps you to do this quickly!

How To Use It

installation

npm install envarconst -g

cli

envarconst comes with an cli tool which you can use. It either reads from an file, or from stdin. When using stdin you can use Unix pipes in your build process.

envarconst -d DEV=false -d MOBILE=true ./file.js

Using Unix pipes with wrapup and UglifyJS:

wrup -r ./mymodule | envarconst -d DEV=false | uglifyjs -m -c -o mymodule.min.js

JavaScript

The JS API is very simple, simply require the module, and call the function with the JS code and the new constants.

var envarconst = require('envarconst');
envarconst("const FOO = false", {
	FOO: "true"
}); // "const FOO = true"

Why Not UglifyJS --define

UglifyJS doesn't replace variables or constants. So those variables defined by --define are only later specified. This causes problems when you just want to use if (DEV){ ... }, instead you have to do an extra typeof DEV != 'undefined' check, which is ugly and too verbose.

But older browsers (IE) don't support const

If you use wrapup first, use AMD, or some other pattern where your code is always in some (function(){ ... code here ... })(); function scope, UglifyJS will remove all const declarations!

echo "(function(){ const FOO = true; console.log(FOO ? 'hey' : 'boo'); })();" | uglifyjs -m -c

results in:

(function(){console.log("hey")})();

which is totally safe!

License

MIT