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I'm beginning to evaluate javascript module tools like RequireJS for javascript modularization. This seems useful, especially during development, so I don't need to recompile all of the js files into mylib-<version>.js whenever I change one of the dependent files.
My app is distributed with both html and javascript files, and in production, I would like to use the compiled version of the javascript file.
So in development, my html file might look something like
<html>
<head>
<script data-main="scripts/main" src="scripts/require.js"></script>
</head>
</html>
But in production, I would expect it to look more like
<html>
<head>
<script src="mylib-1.0.js"></script>
</head>
</html>
I wouldn't think it production that there should be any need to reference requirejs if I am distributing a compiled file.
Is there a way to do this without having to manually change my html files before I distribute the app?
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RequireJS, like LABjs, allows for asynchronous JavaScript loading and dependency management; but, RequireJS uses a much more modular approach to dependency definitions. This is just an initial exploration of RequireJS. RequireJS seems to be quite robust and includes optimization and "build" tools for deployment.
RequireJS is a JavaScript library and file loader which manages the dependencies between JavaScript files and in modular programming. It also helps to improve the speed and quality of the code.
Syntax. define(['module1', 'module2'], function (module1, module2) { //define the module value by returning a value return function () {}; }); You can pass a list of module names when you define a module and RequireJS can be used to retrieve these modules before executing the module.
As per RequireJS API documentation, shim lets you. Configure the dependencies, exports, and custom initialization for older, traditional "browser globals" scripts that do not use define() to declare the dependencies and set a module value.
RequireJs has an optimization tool, which can help you to minify and concatenate your modules. It has a lot of options, and can be difficult to use, but it gets easier with a build tool like GruntJs or (especially) Yeoman, which uses GruntJs to build.
In both you can use the rjs task (which optimizes modules), but again Yeoman is a bit easier since it has generators which will configure it already for you:
// usemin handler should point to the file containing
// the usemin blocks to be parsed
'usemin-handler': {
html: 'index.html'
},
// rjs configuration. You don't necessarily need to specify the typical
// `path` configuration, the rjs task will parse these values from your
// main module, using http://requirejs.org/docs/optimization.html#mainConfigFile
//
// name / out / mainConfig file should be used. You can let it blank if
// you're using usemin-handler to parse rjs config from markup (default
// setup)
rjs: {
// no minification, is done by the min task
optimize: 'none',
baseUrl: './scripts',
wrap: true,
name: 'main'
},
In the index.html you just use a comment line to specify which js files should be minified/concatenated to which output file:
<!-- build:js scripts/amd-app.js -->
<script data-main="scripts/main" src="scripts/vendor/require.js"></script>
<!-- endbuild -->
In the example above, the modules will be concatenated to ONE file, named amd-app.js.
Edit:
This will be done by executing grunt from the command line. This will start a lot of useful tasks, which will build the project in a dist folder, but again this is highly adaptable.
The resulting index.html file (in dist) has only (if you want) one javascript file:
<script src="scripts/15964141.amd-app.js"></script>
My advice: use Yeoman to make life easier (at least for handling minification/concatenation).
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