brfs

What is brfs?

The brfs npm package is a browserify transform that allows you to inline the contents of files into your JavaScript bundle. It is particularly useful for including static assets like HTML, CSS, or text files directly into your JavaScript code, making it easier to manage dependencies and resources in a single bundle.

What are brfs's main functionalities?

Inline File Contents

This feature allows you to read the contents of a file and inline it directly into your JavaScript code. The example demonstrates how to read an HTML file and log its contents to the console.

const fs = require('fs');
const html = fs.readFileSync(__dirname + '/template.html', 'utf8');
console.log(html);

Transform Static Assets

This feature enables you to include static assets like CSS files directly into your JavaScript bundle. The example shows how to read a CSS file and log its contents to the console.

const fs = require('fs');
const css = fs.readFileSync(__dirname + '/styles.css', 'utf8');
console.log(css);

Other packages similar to brfs

browserify

Browserify is a tool that allows you to use Node.js-style require() statements in the browser. While brfs is a transform for browserify to inline file contents, browserify itself is a more general tool for bundling JavaScript files and their dependencies for use in the browser.

webpack

Webpack is a module bundler that can handle various types of assets, including JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. It offers more advanced features like code splitting and hot module replacement. Compared to brfs, webpack provides a more comprehensive solution for managing and bundling assets.

rollup

Rollup is a module bundler for JavaScript that focuses on creating smaller and faster bundles. It supports various plugins to handle different types of assets. While brfs is specifically for inlining file contents, Rollup offers a broader range of functionalities for optimizing and bundling JavaScript code.

README

brfs

fs.readFileSync() and fs.readFile() static asset browserify transform

This module is a plugin for browserify to parse the AST for fs.readFileSync() calls so that you can inline file contents into your bundles.

Even though this module is intended for use with browserify, nothing about it is particularly specific to browserify so it should be generally useful in other projects.

example

for a main.js:

var fs = require('fs');
var html = fs.readFileSync(__dirname + '/robot.html', 'utf8');
console.log(html);

and a robot.html:

<b>beep boop</b>

first npm install brfs into your project, then:

on the command-line

$ browserify -t brfs example/main.js > bundle.js

now in the bundle output file,

var html = fs.readFileSync(__dirname + '/robot.html', 'utf8');

turns into:

var html = "<b>beep boop</b>\n";

or with the api

var browserify = require('browserify');
var fs = require('fs');

var b = browserify('example/main.js');
b.transform('brfs');

b.bundle().pipe(fs.createWriteStream('bundle.js'));

async

You can also use fs.readFile():

var fs = require('fs');
fs.readFile(__dirname + '/robot.html', 'utf8', function (err, html) {
    console.log(html);
});

When you run this code through brfs, it turns into:

var fs = require('fs');
process.nextTick(function () {(function (err, html) {
    console.log(html);
})(null,"<b>beep boop</b>\n")});

methods

brfs looks for:

• fs.readFileSync(pathExpr, enc=null)
• fs.readFile(pathExpr, enc=null, cb)
• fs.readdirSync(pathExpr)
• fs.readdir(pathExpr, cb)

Inside of each pathExpr, you can use statically analyzable expressions and these variables and functions:

• __dirname
• __filename
• path if you var path = require('path') first
• require.resolve()

Just like node, the default encoding is null and will give back a Buffer. If you want differently-encoded file contents for your inline content you can set enc to 'utf8', 'base64', or 'hex'.

In async mode when a callback cb is given, the contents of pathExpr are inlined into the source inside of a process.nextTick() call.

When you use a 'file'-event aware watcher such as watchify, the inlined assets will be updated automatically.

If you want to use this plugin directly, not through browserify, the api follows.

var brfs = require('brfs')

var tr = brfs(file, opts)

Return a through stream tr inlining fs.readFileSync() file contents in-place.

Optionally, you can set which opts.vars will be used in the static argument evaluation in addition to __dirname and __filename.

opts.parserOpts can be used to configure the parser brfs uses, acorn.

events

tr.on('file', function (file) {})

For every file included with fs.readFileSync() or fs.readFile(), the tr instance emits a 'file' event with the file path.

usage

A tiny command-line program ships with this module to make debugging easier.

usage:

  brfs file
 
    Inline `fs.readFileSync()` calls from `file`, printing the transformed file
    contents to stdout.

  brfs
  brfs -
 
    Inline `fs.readFileSync()` calls from stdin, printing the transformed file
    contents to stdout.

install

With npm do:

npm install brfs

then use -t brfs with the browserify command or use .transform('brfs') from the browserify api.

gotchas

Since brfs evaluates your source code statically, you can't use dynamic expressions that need to be evaluated at run time. For example:

// WILL NOT WORK!
var file = window.someFilePath;
var str = require('fs').readFileSync(file, 'utf8');

Instead, you must use simpler expressions that can be resolved at build-time:

var str = require('fs').readFileSync(__dirname + '/file.txt', 'utf8');

Another gotcha: brfs does not yet support ES module import statements. See brfs-babel for an experimental replacement that supports this syntax.

license

MIT