sofe-babel-plugin

sofe-babel-plugin provides a babel plugin and a few other utility functions that make life easier when using sofe services. It primarily is used for (1) webpack apps that depend on sofe services and (2) testing modules that depend on sofe services.

(1) Webpack workflow

Since webpack bundles at build-time, but sofe loads modules at runtime, writing webpack apps that depend on sofe services can become tedious. The problem is that asynchronous System.import('service!sofe') statements are much less convenient than their synchronous counterpart import service from 'service!sofe'. So sofe-babel-plugin gives you a way to still think about your code in a synchronous, bundled way while still loading sofe services at runtime in the browser. This is achieved by altering your bootstrap process to preload sofe services, and then using the sofe-babel-plugin to replace all the sofe import statements with references to the preloaded services.

Steps:

1. Set up sofe
2. Make sure your webpack configuration is set up for babel
3. npm install --save-dev sofe-babel-plugin
4. Add "sofe-babel-plugin" to the "plugins" property of your .babelrc or package.json
5. Run webpack to bundle your app just like you normally would.
6. jspm install npm:sofe-babel-plugin
7. For now, remove the <script> tag for your webpack bundle.
8. Alter your html file to include the following (after the script tag for system.js):

<script>
  System.import('sofe-babel-plugin/lib/runtime')
  .then(function(sofeBabelRuntime) {
    // List here all of the sofe services you need in your webpack app
    sofeBabelRuntime.loadServices([
      'sofe-service-1',
      'sofe-service-2',
      'another-service'
    ])
    .then(loadWebpackApp)
    .catch(function(ex) {
      throw new Error('Could not bootstrap sofe services');
    });
    
    function loadWebpackApp() {
      var webpackScriptElement = document.createElement('script');
      webpackScriptElement.setAttribute('src', '/replace-this-url-with-the-path-to-the-webpack-bundle.js');
      document.head.appendChild(webpackScriptElement);
    }
  })
  .catch(function(ex) {
    console.error("Could not find sofe-babel-plugin's runtime, to bootstrap the sofe services")
    throw ex;
  });
</script>

(2) Testing modules that depend on sofe services

Without sofe-babel-plugin, testing modules that depend on sofe services can be insurmountably burdensome. Since sofe services are loaded at runtime and cannot be found in your node_modules, your test setup usually involves a beastly karma / jspm config plus a test environment with full network access. If you've pulled this off, I applaud you. But if you're looking for something simpler, take a look at the following steps for how to mock sofe services in a test environment:

1. npm install sofe-babel-plugin --save-dev
2. Add "sofe-babel-plugin" to the "plugins" property of your .babelrc or package.json
3. Make sure that babel is compiling your code before the tests are run on it. For the major test frameworks, see the babel docs.
4. Ensure that the following code is run before your test framework tries to run any tests:

const sofeTestHelpers = require('sofe-babel-plugin/lib/test-helpers.js');

sofeTestHelpers.mockSofeServices({
  'sofe-service-1': {
    func1: funtion() {},
    prop2: 'oiufs',
    default: 'this is the default exported value'
  },
	
  'sofe-service-2': {
    func1: funtion() {},
    prop2: 'oiufs',
  },
});

API

The babel plugin

The babel plugin finds all import statements that end with !sofe and replaces them with references to the window.__synchronousSofe__['sofe-service-name'] object. It can handle named exports and default exports. To use it, npm install --save-dev sofe-babel-plugin and then add "sofe-babel-plugin" to the "plugins" property of your .babelrc or package.json

The runtime library

The runtime library (used via import * as sofeBabelRuntime from 'sofe-babel-plugin/lib/runtime.js') is intended to be used by browser applications during bootstrap. It provides one api, loadServices, that will load sofe services and put them into the window.__synchronousSofe__ object so that dependent code that was compiled with the sofe-babel-plugin will reference the correct global object for all imported sofe services. For examples, see the Webpack Workflow section above. Below are the functions that are provided:

loadServices(serviceNames)

Will call System.import on all of the serviceNames, preloading the services into the global object that is referenced by code that was compiled by the sofe babel plugin.

Parameters

• serviceNames: An array of strings, where each string is the name of the sofe service. You do not need to append !sofe to the end of each service name.

Returns: a Promise that is either resolved with an array of all of the loaded sofe services, or rejected with a SystemJS error.

The test helpers

The test helpers (used via import * as sofeTestHelpers from 'sofe-babel-plugin/lib/test-helpers') provide helper functions that allow you to easily mock sofe services when testing. The following functions are provided:

mockSofeServices(services)

Mocks the sofe services by preloading window.__synchronousSofe__ with the mocked services.

Parameters

• services: An object whose keys are the names of sofe services and whose values are objects. The object values, in turn, have keys for each named / default export, and values of whatever the mocked value of that export should be.

Returns: undefined.

Example:

import * as sofeTestUtils from 'sofe-babel-plugin/lib/test-helpers.js';

sofeTestUtils.mockSofeServices({
  'sofe-service-1': {
    func1: funtion() {},
    prop2: 'oiufs',
    default: 'this is the default exported value'
  },
	
  'sofe-service-2': {
    func1: funtion() {},
    prop2: 'oiufs',
  },
});