Package Exports

require/compiler
require/server

This package does not declare an exports field, so the exports above have been automatically detected and optimized by JSPM instead. If any package subpath is missing, it is recommended to post an issue to the original package (require) to support the "exports" field. If that is not possible, create a JSPM override to customize the exports field for this package.

Readme

require brings `require` to the browser

Node implements a simple module management system with the require statement and the npm command line module manager. This library brings those functionalities to the browser, as well as advanced compilation functionality for production deployment.

Installation

From npm repo

sudo npm install require

or from source

git clone git://github.com/marcuswestin/require.git
sudo npm install ./require

Usage

In your HTML, import a javascript module and all its dependencies with a simple script include. In this case we'll import the example/client module.

<script src="//localhost:1234/example/client"></script>

Start the dev server. You can also pass in the directories in which your javascript modules live. Those directories will be added to the javascript module search path.

require --port 1234 --host localhost
# or
require --port 1234 --host localhost --paths ./path/to/my/js/ ./path/to/node_modules/

(make sure that the npm bin is in your path)

echo "PATH=`npm bin`:$PATH" >> ~/.bash_profile && source ~/.bash_profile

Use programmatically

You can also start the require server programmatically alongside another node server.

var devServer = require('require/server')
devServer.addPath(__dirname + '/modules')
devServer.listen(1234, 'localhost')

Compilation

For production you want to bundle all your dependencies into a single file and compress them.

require compile ./example/shared/dependency.js --level 2

Add to the search path by passing in paths.

require compile dependency.js --level 2 --paths ./example/shared/

There are 4 different compilation levels - they correspond to google closure's compilation levels. Levels 2 and 3 are pretty aggressive and may break certain programming patterns, such as dynamic dispatch (var eventName = 'click', document.body['on' + eventName = function() { ... })

Compilation levels:
0 - none
1 - whitespace
2 - simple optimizations
3 - advanced optimizations

You can also use the compiler programmatically. Pass it a snippet of code or a file path.

var compiler = require('require/compiler')

compiler.compile('./example/client.js', 2, function(err, compiledCode) {
    if (err) { throw err }
    console.log(compiledCode)
})

compiler.compile('console.log(require("./example/shared/dependency"))', 1, function(err, compiledCode) {
    if (err) { throw err }
    console.log(compiledCode)
})

npm packages

require can import npm packages in the browser. Try installing e.g. raphael, the SVG library.

sudo npm install raphael

And then require it client-side

var raphael = require('raphael'),
    canvas = document.body.appendChild(document.createElement('div')),
    paper = raphael(canvas)

paper.circle(50, 50, 40)

Examples

For working examples, give this a try:

node require/examples/server.js
# open browser to localhost:8080

node require/examples/compile.js

require