browserify-handbook
Advanced tools
This document covers how to use browserify to build modular applications.
browserify is a tool for compiling node-flavored commonjs modules for the browser.
You can use browserify to organize your code and use third-party libraries even if you don't use node itself in any other capacity except for bundling and installing packages with npm.
The module system that browserify uses is the same as node, so packages published to npm that were originally intended for use in node but not browsers will work just fine in the browser too.
Increasingly, people are publishing modules to npm which are intentionally designed to work in both node and in the browser using browserify and many packages on npm are intended for use in just the browser. npm is for all javascript, front or backend alike.
You can install this handbook with npm, appropriately enough. Just do:
npm install -g browserify-handbook
Now you will have a browserify-handbook command that will open this readme
file in your $PAGER. Otherwise, you may continue reading this document as you
are presently doing.
Before we can dive too deeply into how to use browserify and how it works, it is important to first understand how the node-flavored version of the commonjs module system works.
In node, there is a require() function for loading code from other files.
If you install a module with npm:
npm install uniq
Then in a file nums.js we can require('uniq'):
var uniq = require('uniq');
var nums = [ 5, 2, 1, 3, 2, 5, 4, 2, 0, 1 ];
console.log(uniq(nums));
The output of this program when run with node is:
$ node nums.js
[ 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ]
You can require relative files by requiring a string that starts with a .. For
example, to load a file foo.js from main.js, in main.js you can do:
var foo = require('./foo.js');
console.log(foo(4));
If foo.js was in the parent directory, you could use ../foo.js instead:
var foo = require('../foo.js');
console.log(foo(4));
or likewise for any other kind of relative path. Relative paths are always resolved with respect to the invoking file's location.
Note that require() returned a function and we assigned that return value to a
variable called uniq. We could have picked any other name and it would have
worked the same. require() returns the exports of the module name that you
specify.
How require() works is unlike many other module systems where imports are akin
to statements that expose themselves as globals or file-local lexicals with
names declared in the module itself outside of your control. Under the node
style of code import with require(), someone reading your program can easily
tell where each piece of functionality came from. This approach scales much
better as the number of modules in an application grows.
To export a single thing from a file so that other files may import it, assign
over the value at module.exports:
module.exports = function (n) {
return n * 111
};
Now when some module main.js loads your foo.js, the return value of
require('./foo.js') will be the exported function:
var foo = require('./foo.js');
console.log(foo(5));
This program will print:
555
You can export any kind of value with module.exports, not just functions.
For example, this is perfectly fine:
module.exports = 555
and so is this:
var numbers = [];
for (var i = 0; i < 100; i++) numbers.push(i);
module.exports = numbers;
There is another form of doing exports specifically for exporting items onto an
object. Here, exports is used instead of module.exports:
exports.beep = function (n) { return n * 1000 }
exports.boop = 555
This program is the same as:
module.exports.beep = function (n) { return n * 1000 }
module.exports.boop = 555
because module.exports is the same as exports and is initially set to an
empty object.
Note however that you can't do:
// this doesn't work
exports = function (n) { return n * 1000 }
because the export value lives on the module object, and so assigning a new
value for exports instead of module.exports masks the original reference.
Instead if you are going to export a single item, always do:
// instead
module.exports = function (n) { return n * 1000 }
If you're still confused, try to understand how modules work in the background:
var module = {
exports: {}
};
// If you require a module, it's basically wrapped in a function
(function(module, exports) {
exports = function (n) { return n * 1000 };
}(module, module.exports))
console.log(module.exports); // it's still an empty object :(
Most of the time, you will want to export a single function or constructor with
module.exports because it's usually best for a module to do one thing.
The exports feature was originally the primary way of exporting functionality
and module.exports was an afterthought, but module.exports proved to be much
more useful in practice at being more direct, clear, and avoiding duplication.
In the early days, this style used to be much more common:
foo.js:
exports.foo = function (n) { return n * 111 }
main.js:
var foo = require('./foo.js');
console.log(foo.foo(5));
but note that the foo.foo is a bit superfluous. Using module.exports it
becomes more clear:
foo.js:
module.exports = function (n) { return n * 111 }
main.js:
var foo = require('./foo.js');
console.log(foo(5));
To run a module in node, you've got to start from somewhere.
In node you pass a file to the node command to run a file:
$ node robot.js
beep boop
In browserify, you do this same thing, but instead of running the file, you
generate a stream of concatenated javascript files on stdout that you can write
to a file with the > operator:
$ browserify robot.js > bundle.js
Now bundle.js contains all the javascript that robot.js needs to work.
Just plop it into a single script tag in some html:
<html>
<body>
<script src="bundle.js"></script>
</body>
</html>
Bonus: if you put your script tag right before the </body>, you can use all of
the dom elements on the page without waiting for a dom onready event.
There are many more things you can do with bundling. Check out the bundling section elsewhere in this document.
Browserify starts at the entry point files that you give it and searches for any
require() calls it finds using
static analysis
of the source code's
abstract syntax tree.
For every require() call with a string in it, browserify resolves those module
strings to file paths and then searches those file paths for require() calls
recursively until the entire dependency graph is visited.
Each file is concatenated into a single javascript file with a minimal
require() definition that maps the statically-resolved names to internal IDs.
This means that the bundle you generate is completely self-contained and has everything your application needs to work with a pretty negligible overhead.
For more details about how browserify works, check out the compiler pipeline section of this document.
node has a clever algorithm for resolving modules that is unique among rival platforms.
Instead of resolving packages from an array of system search paths like how
$PATH works on the command line, node's mechanism is local by default.
If you require('./foo.js') from /beep/boop/bar.js, node will
look for ./foo.js in /beep/boop/foo.js. Paths that start with a ./ or
../ are always local to the file that calls require().
If however you require a non-relative name such as require('xyz') from
/beep/boop/foo.js, node searches these paths in order, stopping at the first
match and raising an error if nothing is found:
/beep/boop/node_modules/xyz
/beep/node_modules/xyz
/node_modules/xyz
For each xyz directory that exists, node will first look for an
xyz/package.json to see if a "main" field exists. The "main" field defines
which file should take charge if you require() the directory path.
For example, if /beep/node_modules/xyz is the first match and
/beep/node_modules/xyz/package.json has:
{
"name": "xyz",
"version": "1.2.3",
"main": "lib/abc.js"
}
then the exports from /beep/node_modules/xyz/lib/abc.js will be returned by
require('xyz').
If there is no package.json or no "main" field, index.js is assumed:
/beep/node_modules/xyz/index.js
If you need to, you can reach into a package to pick out a particular file. For
example, to load the lib/clone.js file from the dat package, just do:
var clone = require('dat/lib/clone.js')
The recursive node_modules resolution will find the first dat package up the
directory hierarchy, then the lib/clone.js file will be resolved from there.
This require('dat/lib/clone.js') approach will work from any location where
you can require('dat').
node also has a mechanism for searching an array of paths, but this mechanism is
deprecated and you should be using node_modules/ unless you have a very good
reason not to.
The great thing about node's algorithm and how npm installs packages is that you
can never have a version conflict, unlike almost every other platform. npm
installs the dependencies of each package into node_modules.
Each library gets its own local node_modules/ directory where its dependencies
are stored and each dependency's dependencies has its own node_modules/
directory, recursively all the way down.
This means that packages can successfully use different versions of libraries in the same application, which greatly decreases the coordination overhead necessary to iterate on APIs. This feature is very important for an ecosystem like npm where there is no central authority to manage how packages are published and organized. Everyone may simply publish as they see fit and not worry about how their dependency version choices might impact other dependencies included in the same application.
You can leverage how node_modules/ works to organize your own local
application modules too. See the avoiding ../../../../../../.. section for
more.
Browserify is a build step that runs on the server. It generates a single bundle file that has everything in it.
Here are some other ways of implementing module systems for the browser and what their strengths and weaknesses are:
Instead of a module system, each file defines properties on the window global object or develops an internal namespacing scheme.
This approach does not scale well without extreme diligence since each new file
needs an additional <script> tag in all of the html pages where the
application will be rendered. Further, the files tend to be very order-sensitive
because some files need to be included before other files that expect globals to
already be present in the environment.
It can be difficult to refactor or maintain applications built this way. On the plus side, all browsers natively support this approach and no server-side tooling is required.
This approach tends to be very slow since each <script> tag initiates a
new round-trip http request.
Instead of window globals, all the scripts are concatenated beforehand on the
server. The code is still order-sensitive and difficult to maintain, but loads
much faster because only a single http request for a single <script> tag needs
to execute.
Without source maps, exceptions thrown will have offsets that can't be easily mapped back to their original files.
Instead of using <script> tags, every file is wrapped with a define()
function and callback. This is AMD.
The first argument is an array of modules to load that maps to each argument supplied to the callback. Once all the modules are loaded, the callback fires.
define(['jquery'] , function ($) {
return function () {};
});
You can give your module a name in the first argument so that other modules can include it.
There is a commonjs sugar syntax that stringifies each callback and scans it for
require() calls
with a regexp.
Code written this way is much less order-sensitive than concatenation or globals since the order is resolved by explicit dependency information.
For performance reasons, most of the time AMD is bundled server-side into a single file and during development it is more common to actually use the asynchronous feature of AMD.
If you're going to have a build step for performance and a sugar syntax for convenience, why not scrap the whole AMD business altogether and bundle commonjs? With tooling you can resolve modules to address order-sensitivity and your development and production environments will be much more similar and less fragile. The CJS syntax is nicer and the ecosystem is exploding because of node and npm.
You can seamlessly share code between node and the browser. You just need a build step and some tooling for source maps and auto-rebuilding.
Plus, we can use node's module lookup algorithms to save us from version mismatch problems so that we can have multiple conflicting versions of different required packages in the same application and everything will still work. To save bytes down the wire you can dedupe, which is covered elsewhere in this document.
Concatenation has some downsides, but these can be very adequately addressed with development tooling.
Browserify supports a --debug/-d flag and opts.debug parameter to enable
source maps. Source maps tell the browser to convert line and column offsets for
exceptions thrown in the bundle file back into the offsets and filenames of the
original sources.
The source maps include all the original file contents inline so that you can simply put the bundle file on a web server and not need to ensure that all the original source contents are accessible from the web server with paths set up correctly.
The downside of inlining all the source files into the inline source map is that
the bundle is twice as large. This is fine for debugging locally but not
practical for shipping source maps to production. However, you can use
exorcist to pull the inline source map out
into a separate bundle.map.js file:
browserify main.js --debug | exorcist bundle.map.js > bundle.js
Running a command to recompile your bundle every time can be slow and tedious. Luckily there are many tools to solve this problem. Some of these tools support live-reloading to various degrees and others have a more traditional manual refresh cycle.
These are just a few of the tools you can use, but there are many more on npm! There are many different tools here that encompass many different tradeoffs and development styles. It can be a little bit more work up-front to find the tools that resonate most strongly with your own personal expectations and experience, but I think this diversity helps programmers to be more effective and provides more room for creativity and experimentation. I think diversity in tooling and a smaller browserify core is healthier in the medium to long term than picking a few "winners" by including them in browserify core (which creates all kinds of havoc in meaningful versioning and bitrot in core).
That said, here are a few modules you might want to consider for setting up a browserify development workflow. But keep an eye out for other tools not (yet) on this list!
You can use watchify interchangeably with browserify but instead of writing
to an output file once, watchify will write the bundle file and then watch all
of the files in your dependency graph for changes. When you modify a file, the
new bundle file will be written much more quickly than the first time because of
aggressive caching.
You can use -v to print a message every time a new bundle is written:
$ watchify browser.js -d -o static/bundle.js -v
610598 bytes written to static/bundle.js 0.23s
610606 bytes written to static/bundle.js 0.10s
610597 bytes written to static/bundle.js 0.14s
610606 bytes written to static/bundle.js 0.08s
610597 bytes written to static/bundle.js 0.08s
610597 bytes written to static/bundle.js 0.19s
Here is a handy configuration for using watchify and browserify with the package.json "scripts" field:
{
"build": "browserify browser.js -o static/bundle.js",
"watch": "watchify browser.js -o static/bundle.js --debug --verbose",
}
To build the bundle for production do npm run build and to watch files for
during development do npm run watch.
If you would rather spin up a web server that automatically recompiles your code when you modify it, check out beefy.
Just give beefy an entry file:
beefy main.js
and it will set up shop on an http port.
In a similar spirit to beefy but in a more minimal form is wzrd.
Just npm install -g wzrd then you can do:
wzrd app.js
and open up http://localhost:9966 in your browser.
If you are using express, check out browserify-middleware or enchilada.
They both provide middleware you can drop into an express application for serving browserify bundles.
livereactload is a tool for react that automatically updates your web page state when you modify your code.
livereactload is just an ordinary browserify transform that you can load with
-t livereactload, but you should consult the
project readme
for more information.
browserify-hmr is a plugin for doing hot module replacement (hmr).
Files can mark themselves as accepting updates. If you modify a file that accepts updates of itself, or if you modify a dependency of a file that accepts updates, then the file is re-executed with the new code.
For example, if we have a file, main.js:
document.body.textContent = require('./msg.js')
if (module.hot) module.hot.accept()
and a file msg.js:
module.exports = 'hey'
We can watch main.js for changes and load the browserify-hmr plugin:
$ watchify main.js -p browserify-hmr -o public/bundle.js -dv
and serve up the static file contents in public/ with a static file server:
$ ecstatic public -p 8000
Now if we load http://localhost:8000, we see the message hey on the page.
If we change msg.js to be:
module.exports = 'wow'
then a second later, the page updates to show wow all by itself.
Browserify-HMR can be used with
react-hot-transform to
automatically allow all React components to be updated live in addition to code
using the module.hot API. Unlike
livereactload, only modified
files are re-executed instead of the whole bundle on each modification.
budo is a browserify development server with a stronger focus on incremental bundling and LiveReload integration (including CSS injection).
Install it like so:
npm install budo -g
And run it on your entry file:
budo app.js
This starts the server at http://localhost:9966 with a default index.html, incrementally bundling your source on filesave. The requests are delayed until the bundle has finished, so you won't be served stale or empty bundles if you refresh the page mid-update.
To enable LiveReload and have the browser refresh on JS/HTML/CSS changes, you can run it like so:
budo app.js --live
You can just use the API directly from an ordinary http.createServer() for
development too:
var browserify = require('browserify');
var http = require('http');
http.createServer(function (req, res) {
if (req.url === '/bundle.js') {
res.setHeader('content-type', 'application/javascript');
var b = browserify(__dirname + '/main.js').bundle();
b.on('error', console.error);
b.pipe(res);
}
else res.writeHead(404, 'not found')
});
If you use grunt, you'll probably want to use the grunt-browserify plugin.
If you use gulp, you should use the browserify API directly.
Here is a guide for getting started with gulp and browserify.
Here is a guide on how to make browserify builds fast with watchify using gulp from the official gulp recipes.
In order to make more npm modules originally written for node work in the browser, browserify provides many browser-specific implementations of node core libraries:
events, stream, url, path, and querystring are particularly useful in a browser environment.
Additionally, if browserify detects the use of Buffer, process, global,
__filename, or __dirname, it will include a browser-appropriate definition.
So even if a module does a lot of buffer and stream operations, it will probably just work in the browser, so long as it doesn't do any server IO.
If you haven't done any node before, here are some examples of what each of those globals can do. Note too that these globals are only actually defined when you or some module you depend on uses them.
In node all the file and network APIs deal with Buffer chunks. In browserify the Buffer API is provided by buffer, which uses augmented typed arrays in a very performant way with fallbacks for old browsers.
Here's an example of using Buffer to convert a base64 string to hex:
var buf = Buffer('YmVlcCBib29w', 'base64');
var hex = buf.toString('hex');
console.log(hex);
This example will print:
6265657020626f6f70
In node, process is a special object that handles information and control for
the running process such as environment, signals, and standard IO streams.
Of particular consequence is the process.nextTick() implementation that
interfaces with the event loop.
In browserify the process implementation is handled by the
process module which just provides
process.nextTick() and little else.
Here's what process.nextTick() does:
setTimeout(function () {
console.log('third');
}, 0);
process.nextTick(function () {
console.log('second');
});
console.log('first');
This script will output:
first
second
third
process.nextTick(fn) is like setTimeout(fn, 0), but faster because
setTimeout is artificially slower in javascript engines for compatibility reasons.
In node, global is the top-level scope where global variables are attached
similar to how window works in the browser. In browserify, global is just an
alias for the window object.
__filename is the path to the current file, which is different for each file.
To prevent disclosing system path information, this path is rooted at the
opts.basedir that you pass to browserify(), which defaults to the
current working directory.
If we have a main.js:
var bar = require('./foo/bar.js');
console.log('here in main.js, __filename is:', __filename);
bar();
and a foo/bar.js:
module.exports = function () {
console.log('here in foo/bar.js, __filename is:', __filename);
};
then running browserify starting at main.js gives this output:
$ browserify main.js | node
here in main.js, __filename is: /main.js
here in foo/bar.js, __filename is: /foo/bar.js
__dirname is the directory of the current file. Like __filename, __dirname
is rooted at the opts.basedir.
Here's an example of how __dirname works:
main.js:
require('./x/y/z/abc.js');
console.log('in main.js __dirname=' + __dirname);
x/y/z/abc.js:
console.log('in abc.js, __dirname=' + __dirname);
output:
$ browserify main.js | node
in abc.js, __dirname=/x/y/z
in main.js __dirname=/
Instead of browserify baking in support for everything, it supports a flexible transform system that are used to convert source files in-place.
This way you can require() files written in coffee script or templates and
everything will be compiled down to javascript.
To use coffeescript for example, you can use the
coffeeify transform.
Make sure you've installed coffeeify first with npm install coffeeify then do:
$ browserify -t coffeeify main.coffee > bundle.js
or with the API you can do:
var b = browserify('main.coffee');
b.transform('coffeeify');
The best part is, if you have source maps enabled with --debug or
opts.debug, the bundle.js will map exceptions back into the original coffee
script source files. This is very handy for debugging with firebug or chrome
inspector.
Transforms implement a simple streaming interface. Here is a transform that
replaces $CWD with the process.cwd():
var through = require('through2');
module.exports = function (file) {
return through(function (buf, enc, next) {
this.push(buf.toString('utf8').replace(/\$CWD/g, process.cwd()));
next();
});
};
The transform function fires for every file in the current package and returns
a transform stream that performs the conversion. The stream is written to and by
browserify with the original file contents and browserify reads from the stream
to obtain the new contents.
Simply save your transform to a file or make a package and then add it with
-t ./your_transform.js.
For more information about how streams work, check out the stream handbook.
You can define a "browser" field in the package.json of any package that will
tell browserify to override lookups for the main field and for individual
modules.
If you have a module with a main entry point of main.js for node but have a
browser-specific entry point at browser.js, you can do:
{
"name": "mypkg",
"version": "1.2.3",
"main": "main.js",
"browser": "browser.js"
}
Now when somebody does require('mypkg') in node, they will get the exports
from main.js, but when they do require('mypkg') in a browser, they will get
the exports from browser.js.
Splitting up whether you are in the browser or not with a "browser" field in
this way is greatly preferable to checking whether you are in a browser at
runtime because you may want to load different modules based on whether you are
in node or the browser. If the require() calls for both node and the browser
are in the same file, browserify's static analysis will include everything
whether you use those files or not.
You can do more with the "browser" field as an object instead of a string.
For example, if you only want to swap out a single file in lib/ with a
browser-specific version, you could do:
{
"name": "mypkg",
"version": "1.2.3",
"main": "main.js",
"browser": {
"lib/foo.js": "lib/browser-foo.js"
}
}
or if you want to swap out a module used locally in the package, you can do:
{
"name": "mypkg",
"version": "1.2.3",
"main": "main.js",
"browser": {
"fs": "level-fs-browser"
}
}
You can ignore files (setting their contents to the empty object) by setting
their values in the browser field to false:
{
"name": "mypkg",
"version": "1.2.3",
"main": "main.js",
"browser": {
"winston": false
}
}
The browser field only applies to the current package. Any mappings you put will not propagate down to its dependencies or up to its dependents. This isolation is designed to protect modules from each other so that when you require a module you won't need to worry about any system-wide effects it might have. Likewise, you shouldn't need to worry about how your local configuration might adversely affect modules far away deep into your dependency graph.
You can configure transforms to be automatically applied when a module is loaded
in a package's browserify.transform field. For example, we can automatically
apply the brfs transform with this
package.json:
{
"name": "mypkg",
"version": "1.2.3",
"main": "main.js",
"browserify": {
"transform": [ "brfs" ]
}
}
Now in our main.js we can do:
var fs = require('fs');
var src = fs.readFileSync(__dirname + '/foo.txt', 'utf8');
module.exports = function (x) { return src.replace(x, 'zzz') };
and the fs.readFileSync() call will be inlined by brfs without consumers of
the module having to know. You can apply as many transforms as you like in the
transform array and they will be applied in order.
Like the "browser" field, transforms configured in package.json will only
apply to the local package for the same reasons.
Sometimes a transform takes configuration options on the command line. To apply these from package.json you can do the following.
on the command line
browserify -t coffeeify \
-t [ browserify-ngannotate --ext .coffee --bar ] \
index.coffee > index.js
in package.json
"browserify": {
"transform": [
"coffeeify",
["browserify-ngannotate", {"ext": ".coffee", "bar": true}]
]
}
Here are some useful heuristics for finding good modules on npm that work in the browser:
I can install it with npm
code snippet on the readme using require() - from a quick glance I should see how to integrate the library into what I'm presently working on
has a very clear, narrow idea about scope and purpose
knows when to delegate to other libraries - doesn't try to do too many things itself
written or maintained by authors whose opinions about software scope, modularity, and interfaces I generally agree with (often a faster shortcut than reading the code/docs very closely)
inspecting which modules depend on the library I'm evaluating - this is baked into the package page for modules published to npm
Other metrics like number of stars on github, project activity, or a slick landing page, are not as reliable.
People used to think that exporting a bunch of handy utility-style things would be the main way that programmers would consume code because that is the primary way of exporting and importing code on most other platforms and indeed still persists even on npm.
However, this kitchen-sink mentality toward including a bunch of thematically-related but separable functionality into a single package appears to be an artifact for the difficulty of publishing and discovery in a pre-github, pre-npm era.
There are two other big problems with modules that try to export a bunch of functionality all in one place under the auspices of convenience: demarcation turf wars and finding which modules do what.
Packages that are grab-bags of features waste a ton of time policing boundaries about which new features belong and don't belong. There is no clear natural boundary of the problem domain in this kind of package about what the scope is, it's all somebody's smug opinion.
Node, npm, and browserify are not that. They are avowedly à la carte, participatory, and would rather celebrate disagreement and the dizzying proliferation of new ideas and approaches than try to clamp down in the name of conformity, standards, or "best practices".
Nobody who needs to do gaussian blur ever thinks "hmm I guess I'll start checking
generic mathematics, statistics, image processing, and utility libraries to see
which one has gaussian blur in it. Was it stats2 or image-pack-utils or
maths-extra or maybe underscore has that one?"
No. None of this. Stop it. They npm search gaussian and they immediately see
ndarray-gaussian-filter and
it does exactly what they want and then they continue on with their actual
problem instead of getting lost in the weeds of somebody's neglected grand
utility fiefdom.
Not everything in an application properly belongs on the public npm and the
overhead of setting up a private npm or git repo is still rather large in many
cases. Here are some approaches for avoiding the ../../../../../../../
relative paths problem.
The simplest thing you can do is to symlink your app root directory into your node_modules/ directory.
Did you know that symlinks work on windows too?
To link a lib/ directory in your project root into node_modules, do:
ln -s ../lib node_modules/app
and now from anywhere in your project you'll be able to require files in lib/
by doing require('app/foo.js') to get lib/foo.js.
People sometimes object to putting application-specific modules into node_modules because it is not obvious how to check in your internal modules without also checking in third-party modules from npm.
The answer is quite simple! If you have a .gitignore file that ignores
node_modules:
node_modules
You can just add an exception with ! for each of your internal application
modules:
node_modules/*
!node_modules/foo
!node_modules/bar
Please note that you can't unignore a subdirectory,
if the parent is already ignored. So instead of ignoring node_modules,
you have to ignore every directory inside node_modules with the
node_modules/* trick, and then you can add your exceptions.
Now anywhere in your application you will be able to require('foo') or
require('bar') without having a very large and fragile relative path.
If you have a lot of modules and want to keep them more separate from the
third-party modules installed by npm, you can just put them all under a
directory in node_modules such as node_modules/app:
node_modules/app/foo
node_modules/app/bar
Now you will be able to require('app/foo') or require('app/bar') from
anywhere in your application.
In your .gitignore, just add an exception for node_modules/app:
node_modules/*
!node_modules/app
If your application had transforms configured in package.json, you'll need to
create a separate package.json with its own transform field in your
node_modules/foo or node_modules/app/foo component directory because
transforms don't apply across module boundaries. This will make your modules
more robust against configuration changes in your application and it will be
easier to independently reuse the packages outside of your application.
You might see some places talk about using the $NODE_PATH environment variable
or opts.paths to add directories for node and browserify to look in to find
modules.
Unlike most other platforms, using a shell-style array of path directories with
$NODE_PATH is not as favorable in node compared to making effective use of the
node_modules directory.
This is because your application is more tightly coupled to a runtime environment configuration so there are more moving parts and your application will only work when your environment is setup correctly.
node and browserify both support but discourage the use of $NODE_PATH.
There are many browserify transforms you can use to do many things. Commonly, transforms are used to include non-javascript assets into bundle files.
One way of including any kind of asset that works in both node and the browser is brfs.
brfs uses static analysis to compile the results of fs.readFile() and
fs.readFileSync() calls down to source contents at compile time.
For example, this main.js:
var fs = require('fs');
var html = fs.readFileSync(__dirname + '/robot.html', 'utf8');
console.log(html);
applied through brfs would become something like:
var fs = require('fs');
var html = "<b>beep boop</b>";
console.log(html);
when run through brfs.
This is handy because you can reuse the exact same code in node and the browser, which makes sharing modules and testing much simpler.
fs.readFile() and fs.readFileSync() accept the same arguments as in node,
which makes including inline image assets as base64-encoded strings very easy:
var fs = require('fs');
var imdata = fs.readFileSync(__dirname + '/image.png', 'base64');
var img = document.createElement('img');
img.setAttribute('src', 'data:image/png;base64,' + imdata);
document.body.appendChild(img);
If you have some css you want to inline into your bundle, you can do that too with the assistance of a module such as insert-css:
var fs = require('fs');
var insertStyle = require('insert-css');
var css = fs.readFileSync(__dirname + '/style.css', 'utf8');
insertStyle(css);
Inserting css this way works fine for small reusable modules that you distribute with npm because they are fully-contained, but if you want a more holistic approach to asset management using browserify, check out atomify and parcelify.
Putting these ideas about code organization together, we can build a reusable UI component that we can reuse across our application or in other applications.
Here is a bare-bones example of an empty widget module:
module.exports = Widget;
function Widget (opts) {
if (!(this instanceof Widget)) return new Widget(opts);
this.element = document.createElement('div');
}
Widget.prototype.appendTo = function (target) {
if (typeof target === 'string') target = document.querySelector(target);
target.appendChild(this.element);
};
Handy javascript constructor tip: you can include a this instanceof Widget
check like above to let people consume your module with new Widget or
Widget(). It's nice because it hides an implementation detail from your API
and you still get the performance benefits and indentation wins of using
prototypes.
To use this widget, just use require() to load the widget file, instantiate
it, and then call .appendTo() with a css selector string or a dom element.
Like this:
var Widget = require('./widget.js');
var w = Widget();
w.appendTo('#container');
and now your widget will be appended to the DOM.
Creating HTML elements procedurally is fine for very simple content but gets very verbose and unclear for anything bigger. Luckily there are many transforms available to ease importing HTML into your javascript modules.
Let's extend our widget example using brfs. We
can also use domify to turn the string that
fs.readFileSync() returns into an html dom element:
var fs = require('fs');
var domify = require('domify');
var html = fs.readFileSync(__dirname + '/widget.html', 'utf8');
module.exports = Widget;
function Widget (opts) {
if (!(this instanceof Widget)) return new Widget(opts);
this.element = domify(html);
}
Widget.prototype.appendTo = function (target) {
if (typeof target === 'string') target = document.querySelector(target);
target.appendChild(this.element);
};
and now our widget will load a widget.html, so let's make one:
<div class="widget">
<h1 class="name"></h1>
<div class="msg"></div>
</div>
It's often useful to emit events. Here's how we can emit events using the
built-in events module and the inherits
module:
var fs = require('fs');
var domify = require('domify');
var inherits = require('inherits');
var EventEmitter = require('events').EventEmitter;
var html = fs.readFileSync(__dirname + '/widget.html', 'utf8');
inherits(Widget, EventEmitter);
module.exports = Widget;
function Widget (opts) {
if (!(this instanceof Widget)) return new Widget(opts);
this.element = domify(html);
}
Widget.prototype.appendTo = function (target) {
if (typeof target === 'string') target = document.querySelector(target);
target.appendChild(this.element);
this.emit('append', target);
};
Now we can listen for 'append' events on our widget instance:
var Widget = require('./widget.js');
var w = Widget();
w.on('append', function (target) {
console.log('appended to: ' + target.outerHTML);
});
w.appendTo('#container');
We can add more methods to our widget to set elements on the html:
var fs = require('fs');
var domify = require('domify');
var inherits = require('inherits');
var EventEmitter = require('events').EventEmitter;
var html = fs.readFileSync(__dirname + '/widget.html', 'utf8');
inherits(Widget, EventEmitter);
module.exports = Widget;
function Widget (opts) {
if (!(this instanceof Widget)) return new Widget(opts);
this.element = domify(html);
}
Widget.prototype.appendTo = function (target) {
if (typeof target === 'string') target = document.querySelector(target);
target.appendChild(this.element);
};
Widget.prototype.setName = function (name) {
this.element.querySelector('.name').textContent = name;
}
Widget.prototype.setMessage = function (msg) {
this.element.querySelector('.msg').textContent = msg;
}
If setting element attributes and content gets too verbose, check out hyperglue.
Now finally, we can toss our widget.js and widget.html into
node_modules/app-widget. Since our widget uses the
brfs transform, we can create a package.json
with:
{
"name": "app-widget",
"version": "1.0.0",
"private": true,
"main": "widget.js",
"browserify": {
"transform": [ "brfs" ]
},
"dependencies": {
"brfs": "^1.1.1",
"inherits": "^2.0.1"
}
}
And now whenever we require('app-widget') from anywhere in our application,
brfs will be applied to our widget.js automatically!
Our widget can even maintain its own dependencies. This way we can update
dependencies in one widget without worrying about breaking changes cascading
over into other widgets.
Make sure to add an exclusion in your .gitignore for
node_modules/app-widget:
node_modules/*
!node_modules/app-widget
You can read more about shared rendering in node and the browser if you want to learn about sharing rendering logic between node and the browser using browserify and some streaming html libraries.
Testing modular code is very easy! One of the biggest benefits of modularity is that your interfaces become much easier to instantiate in isolation and so it's easy to make automated tests.
Unfortunately, few testing libraries play nicely out of the box with modules and tend to roll their own idiosyncratic interfaces with implicit globals and obtuse flow control that get in the way of a clean design with good separation.
People also make a huge fuss about "mocking" but it's usually not necessary if you design your modules with testing in mind. Keeping IO separate from your algorithms, carefully restricting the scope of your module, and accepting callback parameters for different interfaces can all make your code much easier to test.
For example, if you have a library that does both IO and speaks a protocol, consider separating the IO layer from the protocol using an interface like streams.
Your code will be easier to test and reusable in different contexts that you didn't initially envision. This is a recurring theme of testing: if your code is hard to test, it is probably not modular enough or contains the wrong balance of abstractions. Testing should not be an afterthought, it should inform your whole design and it will help you to write better interfaces.
Tape was specifically designed from the start to work well in both node and
browserify. Suppose we have an index.js with an async interface:
module.exports = function (x, cb) {
setTimeout(function () {
cb(x * 100);
}, 1000);
};
Here's how we can test this module using tape.
Let's put this file in test/beep.js:
var test = require('tape');
var hundreder = require('../');
test('beep', function (t) {
t.plan(1);
hundreder(5, function (n) {
t.equal(n, 500, '5*100 === 500');
});
});
Because the test file lives in test/, we can require the index.js in the
parent directory by doing require('../'). index.js is the default place that
node and browserify look for a module if there is no package.json in that
directory with a main field.
We can require() tape like any other library after it has been installed with
npm install tape.
The string 'beep' is an optional name for the test.
The 3rd argument to t.equal() is a completely optional description.
The t.plan(1) says that we expect 1 assertion. If there are not enough
assertions or too many, the test will fail. An assertion is a comparison
like t.equal(). tape has assertion primitives for:
===x is not truthyand more! You can always add an additional description argument.
Running our module is very simple! To run the module in node, just run
node test/beep.js:
$ node test/beep.js
TAP version 13
# beep
ok 1 5*100 === 500
1..1
# tests 1
# pass 1
# ok
The output is printed to stdout and the exit code is 0.
To run our code in the browser, just do:
$ browserify test/beep.js > bundle.js
then plop bundle.js into a <script> tag:
<script src="bundle.js"></script>
and load that html in a browser. The output will be in the debug console which you can open with F12, ctrl-shift-j, or ctrl-shift-k depending on the browser.
This is a bit cumbersome to run our tests in a browser, but you can install the
testling command to help. First do:
npm install -g testling
And now just do browserify test/beep.js | testling:
$ browserify test/beep.js | testling
TAP version 13
# beep
ok 1 5*100 === 500
1..1
# tests 1
# pass 1
# ok
testling will launch a real browser headlessly on your system to run the tests.
Now suppose we want to add another file, test/boop.js:
var test = require('tape');
var hundreder = require('../');
test('fraction', function (t) {
t.plan(1);
hundreder(1/20, function (n) {
t.equal(n, 5, '1/20th of 100');
});
});
test('negative', function (t) {
t.plan(1);
hundreder(-3, function (n) {
t.equal(n, -300, 'negative number');
});
});
Here our test has 2 test() blocks. The second test block won't start to
execute until the first is completely finished, even though it is asynchronous.
You can even nest test blocks by using t.test().
We can run test/boop.js with node directly as with test/beep.js, but if we
want to run both tests, there is a minimal command-runner we can use that comes
with tape. To get the tape command do:
npm install -g tape
and now you can run:
$ tape test/*.js
TAP version 13
# beep
ok 1 5*100 === 500
# fraction
ok 2 1/20th of 100
# negative
ok 3 negative number
1..3
# tests 3
# pass 3
# ok
and you can just pass test/*.js to browserify to run your tests in the
browser:
$ browserify test/* | testling
TAP version 13
# beep
ok 1 5*100 === 500
# fraction
ok 2 1/20th of 100
# negative
ok 3 negative number
1..3
# tests 3
# pass 3
# ok
Putting together all these steps, we can configure package.json with a test
script:
{
"name": "hundreder",
"version": "1.0.0",
"main": "index.js",
"devDependencies": {
"tape": "^2.13.1",
"testling": "^1.6.1"
},
"scripts": {
"test": "tape test/*.js",
"test-browser": "browserify test/*.js | testlingify"
}
}
Now you can do npm test to run the tests in node and npm run test-browser to
run the tests in the browser. You don't need to worry about installing commands
with -g when you use npm run: npm automatically sets up the $PATH for all
packages installed locally to the project.
If you have some tests that only run in node and some tests that only run in the
browser, you could have subdirectories in test/ such as test/server and
test/browser with the tests that run both places just in test/. Then you
could just add the relevant directory to the globs:
{
"name": "hundreder",
"version": "1.0.0",
"main": "index.js",
"devDependencies": {
"tape": "^2.13.1",
"testling": "^1.6.1"
},
"scripts": {
"test": "tape test/*.js test/server/*.js",
"test-browser": "browserify test/*.js test/browser/*.js | testling"
}
}
and now server-specific and browser-specific tests will be run in addition to the common tests.
If you want something even slicker, check out prova once you have gotten the basic concepts.
The core assert module is a fine way to write simple tests too, although it can sometimes be tricky to ensure that the correct number of callbacks have fired.
You can solve that problem with tools like macgyver but it is appropriately DIY.
A simple way to check code coverage in browserify is to use the coverify transform.
$ browserify -t coverify test/*.js | node | coverify
or to run your tests in a real browser:
$ browserify -t coverify test/*.js | testling | coverify
coverify works by transforming the source of each package so that each
expression is wrapped in a __coverageWrap() function.
Each expression in the program gets a unique ID and the __coverageWrap()
function will print COVERED $FILE $ID the first time the expression is
executed.
Before the expressions run, coverify prints a COVERAGE $FILE $NODES message to
log the expression nodes across the entire file as character ranges.
Here's what the output of a full run looks like:
$ browserify -t coverify test/whatever.js | node
COVERAGE "/home/substack/projects/defined/test/whatever.js" [[14,28],[14,28],[0,29],[41,56],[41,56],[30,57],[95,104],[95,105],[126,146],[126,146],[115,147],[160,194],[160,194],[152,195],[200,217],[200,218],[76,220],[59,221],[59,222]]
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/test/whatever.js" 2
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/test/whatever.js" 1
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/test/whatever.js" 0
COVERAGE "/home/substack/projects/defined/index.js" [[48,49],[55,71],[51,71],[73,76],[92,104],[92,118],[127,139],[120,140],[172,195],[172,196],[0,204],[0,205]]
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/index.js" 11
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/index.js" 10
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/test/whatever.js" 5
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/test/whatever.js" 4
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/test/whatever.js" 3
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/test/whatever.js" 18
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/test/whatever.js" 17
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/test/whatever.js" 16
TAP version 13
# whatever
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/test/whatever.js" 7
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/test/whatever.js" 6
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/test/whatever.js" 10
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/test/whatever.js" 9
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/test/whatever.js" 8
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/test/whatever.js" 13
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/test/whatever.js" 12
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/test/whatever.js" 11
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/index.js" 0
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/index.js" 2
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/index.js" 1
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/index.js" 5
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/index.js" 4
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/index.js" 3
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/index.js" 7
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/index.js" 6
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/test/whatever.js" 15
COVERED "/home/substack/projects/defined/test/whatever.js" 14
ok 1 should be equal
1..1
# tests 1
# pass 1
# ok
These COVERED and COVERAGE statements are just printed on stdout and they can be
fed into the coverify command to generate prettier output:
$ browserify -t coverify test/whatever.js | node | coverify
TAP version 13
# whatever
ok 1 should be equal
1..1
# tests 1
# pass 1
# ok
# /home/substack/projects/defined/index.js: line 6, column 9-32
console.log('whatever');
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
# coverage: 30/31 (96.77 %)
To include code coverage into your project, you can add an entry into the
package.json scripts field:
{
"scripts": {
"test": "tape test/*.js",
"coverage": "browserify -t coverify test/*.js | node | coverify"
}
}
There is also a covert package that simplifies the browserify and coverify setup:
{
"scripts": {
"test": "tape test/*.js",
"coverage": "covert test/*.js"
}
}
To install coverify or covert as a devDependency, run
npm install -D coverify or npm install -D covert.
This section covers bundling in more detail.
Bundling is the step where starting from the entry files, all the source files in the dependency graph are walked and packed into a single output file.
One of the first things you'll want to tweak is how the files that npm installs are placed on disk to avoid duplicates.
When you do a clean install in a directory, npm will ordinarily factor out
similar versions into the topmost directory where 2 modules share a dependency.
However, as you install more packages, new packages will not be factored out
automatically. You can however use the npm dedupe command to factor out
packages for an already-installed set of packages in node_modules/. You could
also remove node_modules/ and install from scratch again if problems with
duplicates persist.
browserify will not include the same exact file twice, but compatible versions
may differ slightly. browserify is also not version-aware, it will include the
versions of packages exactly as they are laid out in node_modules/ according
to the require() algorithm that node uses.
You can use the browserify --list and browserify --deps commands to further
inspect which files are being included to scan for duplicates.
You can generate UMD bundles with --standalone that will work in node, the
browser with globals, and AMD environments.
Just add --standalone NAME to your bundle command:
$ browserify foo.js --standalone xyz > bundle.js
This command will export the contents of foo.js under the external module name
xyz. If a module system is detected in the host environment, it will be used.
Otherwise a window global named xyz will be exported.
You can use dot-syntax to specify a namespace hierarchy:
$ browserify foo.js --standalone foo.bar.baz > bundle.js
If there is already a foo or a foo.bar in the host environment in window
global mode, browserify will attach its exports onto those objects. The AMD and
module.exports modules will behave the same.
Note however that standalone only works with a single entry or directly-required file.
In browserify parlance, "ignore" means: replace the definition of a module with an empty object. "exclude" means: remove a module completely from a dependency graph.
Another way to achieve many of the same goals as ignore and exclude is the "browser" field in package.json, which is covered elsewhere in this document.
Ignoring is an optimistic strategy designed to stub in an empty definition for node-specific modules that are only used in some code paths. For example, if a module requires a library that only works in node but for a specific chunk of the code:
var fs = require('fs');
var path = require('path');
var mkdirp = require('mkdirp');
exports.convert = convert;
function convert (src) {
return src.replace(/beep/g, 'boop');
}
exports.write = function (src, dst, cb) {
fs.readFile(src, function (err, src) {
if (err) return cb(err);
mkdirp(path.dirname(dst), function (err) {
if (err) return cb(err);
var out = convert(src);
fs.writeFile(dst, out, cb);
});
});
};
browserify already "ignores" the 'fs' module by returning an empty object, but
the .write() function here won't work in the browser without an extra step like
a static analysis transform or a runtime storage fs abstraction.
However, if we really want the convert() function but don't want to see
mkdirp in the final bundle, we can ignore mkdirp with b.ignore('mkdirp') or
browserify --ignore mkdirp. The code will still work in the browser if we
don't call write() because require('mkdirp') won't throw an exception, just
return an empty object.
Generally speaking it's not a good idea for modules that are primarily algorithmic (parsers, formatters) to do IO themselves but these tricks can let you use those modules in the browser anyway.
To ignore foo on the command-line do:
browserify --ignore foo
To ignore foo from the api with some bundle instance b do:
b.ignore('foo')
Another related thing we might want is to completely remove a module from the
output so that require('modulename') will fail at runtime. This is useful if
we want to split things up into multiple bundles that will defer in a cascade to
previously-defined require() definitions.
For example, if we have a vendored standalone bundle for jquery that we don't want to appear in the primary bundle:
$ npm install jquery
$ browserify -r jquery --standalone jquery > jquery-bundle.js
then we want to just require('jquery') in a main.js:
var $ = require('jquery');
$(window).click(function () { document.body.bgColor = 'red' });
defering to the jquery dist bundle so that we can write:
<script src="jquery-bundle.js"></script>
<script src="bundle.js"></script>
and not have the jquery definition show up in bundle.js, then while compiling
the main.js, you can --exclude jquery:
browserify main.js --exclude jquery > bundle.js
To exclude foo on the command-line do:
browserify --exclude foo
To exclude foo from the api with some bundle instance b do:
b.exclude('foo')
Unfortunately, some packages are not written with node-style commonjs exports. For modules that export their functionality with globals or AMD, there are packages that can help automatically convert these troublesome packages into something that browserify can understand.
One way to automatically convert non-commonjs packages is with browserify-shim.
browserify-shim is loaded as a
transform and also reads a "browserify-shim" field from package.json.
Suppose we need to use a troublesome third-party library we've placed in
./vendor/foo.js that exports its functionality as a window global called
FOO. We can set up our package.json with:
{
"browserify": {
"transform": "browserify-shim"
},
"browserify-shim": {
"./vendor/foo.js": "FOO"
}
}
and now when we require('./vendor/foo.js'), we get the FOO variable that
./vendor/foo.js tried to put into the global scope, but that attempt was
shimmed away into an isolated context to prevent global pollution.
We could even use the browser field to make require('foo')
work instead of always needing to use a relative path to load ./vendor/foo.js:
{
"browser": {
"foo": "./vendor/foo.js"
},
"browserify": {
"transform": "browserify-shim"
},
"browserify-shim": {
"foo": "FOO"
}
}
Now require('foo') will return the FOO export that ./vendor/foo.js tried
to place on the global scope.
Most of the time, the default method of bundling where one or more entry files map to a single bundled output file is perfectly adequate, particularly considering that bundling minimizes latency down to a single http request to fetch all the javascript assets.
However, sometimes this initial penalty is too high for parts of a website that are rarely or never used by most visitors such as an admin panel. This partitioning can be accomplished with the technique covered in the ignoring and excluding section, but factoring out shared dependencies manually can be tedious for a large and fluid dependency graph.
Luckily, there are plugins that can automatically factor browserify output into separate bundle payloads.
factor-bundle splits browserify output into multiple bundle targets based on entry-point. For each entry-point, an entry-specific output file is built. Files that are needed by two or more of the entry files get factored out into a common bundle.
For example, suppose we have 2 pages: /x and /y. Each page has an entry point,
x.js for /x and y.js for /y.
We then generate page-specific bundles bundle/x.js and bundle/y.js with
bundle/common.js containing the dependencies shared by both x.js and y.js:
browserify x.js y.js -p [ factor-bundle -o bundle/x.js -o bundle/y.js ] \
-o bundle/common.js
Now we can simply put 2 script tags on each page. On /x we would put:
<script src="/bundle/common.js"></script>
<script src="/bundle/x.js"></script>
and on page /y we would put:
<script src="/bundle/common.js"></script>
<script src="/bundle/y.js"></script>
You could also load the bundles asynchronously with ajax or by inserting a script tag into the page dynamically but factor-bundle only concerns itself with generating the bundles, not with loading them.
partition-bundle handles
splitting output into multiple bundles like factor-bundle, but includes a
built-in loader using a special loadjs() function.
partition-bundle takes a json file that maps source files to bundle files:
{
"entry.js": ["./a"],
"common.js": ["./b"],
"common/extra.js": ["./e", "./d"]
}
Then partition-bundle is loaded as a plugin and the mapping file, output directory, and destination url path (required for dynamic loading) are passed in:
browserify -p [ partition-bundle --map mapping.json \
--output output/directory --url directory ]
Now you can add:
<script src="entry.js"></script>
to your page to load the entry file. From inside the entry file, you can
dynamically load other bundles with a loadjs() function:
a.addEventListener('click', function() {
loadjs(['./e', './d'], function(e, d) {
console.log(e, d);
});
});
Since version 5, browserify exposes its compiler pipeline as a labeled-stream-splicer.
This means that transformations can be added or removed directly into the internal pipeline. This pipeline provides a clean interface for advanced customizations such as watching files or factoring bundles from multiple entry points.
For example, we could replace the built-in integer-based labeling mechanism with hashed IDs by first injecting a pass-through transform after the "deps" have been calculated to hash source files. Then we can use the hashes we captured to create our own custom labeler, replacing the built-in "label" transform:
var browserify = require('browserify');
var through = require('through2');
var shasum = require('shasum');
var b = browserify('./main.js');
var hashes = {};
var hasher = through.obj(function (row, enc, next) {
hashes[row.id] = shasum(row.source);
this.push(row);
next();
});
b.pipeline.get('deps').push(hasher);
var labeler = through.obj(function (row, enc, next) {
row.id = hashes[row.id];
Object.keys(row.deps).forEach(function (key) {
row.deps[key] = hashes[row.deps[key]];
});
this.push(row);
next();
});
b.pipeline.get('label').splice(0, 1, labeler);
b.bundle().pipe(process.stdout);
Now instead of getting integers for the IDs in the output format, we get file hashes:
$ node bundle.js
(function e(t,n,r){function s(o,u){if(!n[o]){if(!t[o]){var a=typeof require=="function"&&require;if(!u&&a)return a(o,!0);if(i)return i(o,!0);var f=new Error("Cannot find module '"+o+"'");throw f.code="MODULE_NOT_FOUND",f}var l=n[o]={exports:{}};t[o][0].call(l.exports,function(e){var n=t[o][1][e];return s(n?n:e)},l,l.exports,e,t,n,r)}return n[o].exports}var i=typeof require=="function"&&require;for(var o=0;o<r.length;o++)s(r[o]);return s})({"5f0a0e3a143f2356582f58a70f385f4bde44f04b":[function(require,module,exports){
var foo = require('./foo.js');
var bar = require('./bar.js');
console.log(foo(3) + bar(4));
},{"./bar.js":"cba5983117ae1d6699d85fc4d54eb589d758f12b","./foo.js":"736100869ec2e44f7cfcf0dc6554b055e117c53c"}],"cba5983117ae1d6699d85fc4d54eb589d758f12b":[function(require,module,exports){
module.exports = function (n) { return n * 100 };
},{}],"736100869ec2e44f7cfcf0dc6554b055e117c53c":[function(require,module,exports){
module.exports = function (n) { return n + 1 };
},{}]},{},["5f0a0e3a143f2356582f58a70f385f4bde44f04b"]);
Note that the built-in labeler does other things like checking for the external, excluded configurations so replacing it will be difficult if you depend on those features. This example just serves as an example for the kinds of things you can do by hacking into the compiler pipeline.
Each phase in the browserify pipeline has a label that you can hook onto. Fetch
a label with .get(name) to return a
labeled-stream-splicer
handle at the appropriate label. Once you have a handle, you can .push(),
.pop(), .shift(), .unshift(), and .splice() your own transform streams
into the pipeline or remove existing transform streams.
The recorder is used to capture the inputs sent to the deps phase so that they
can be replayed on subsequent calls to .bundle(). Unlike in previous releases,
v5 can generate bundle output multiple times. This is very handy for tools like
watchify that re-bundle when a file has changed.
The deps phase expects entry and require() files or objects as input and
calls module-deps to generate a stream
of json output for all of the files in the dependency graph.
module-deps is invoked with some customizations here such as:
.js and .json plus options configured
in the opts.extensions parameter in the browserify constructorprocess, Buffer, global, __dirname,
and __filenameThis transform adds module.exports= in front of files with a .json
extension.
This transform removes byte order markers, which are sometimes used by windows text editors to indicate the endianness of files. These markers are ignored by node, so browserify ignores them for compatibility.
This transform checks for syntax errors using the syntax-error package to give informative syntax errors with line and column numbers.
This phase uses deps-sort to sort the rows written to it in order to make the bundles deterministic.
The transform at this phase uses dedupe information provided by
deps-sort in the sort phase to
remove files that have duplicate contents.
This phase converts file-based IDs which might expose system path information and inflate the bundle size into integer-based IDs.
The label phase will also normalize path names based on the opts.basedir or
process.cwd() to avoid exposing system path information.
This phase emits a 'dep' event for each row after the label phase.
If opts.debug was given to the browserify() constructor, this phase will
transform input to add sourceRoot and sourceFile properties which are used
by browser-pack in the pack phase.
This phase converts rows with 'id' and 'source' parameters as input (among
others) and generates the concatenated javascript bundle as output
using browser-pack.
This is an empty phase at the end where you can easily tack on custom post transformations without interfering with existing mechanics.
browser-unpack converts a compiled bundle file back into a format very similar to the output of module-deps.
This is very handy if you need to inspect or transform a bundle that has already been compiled.
For example:
$ browserify src/main.js | browser-unpack
[
{"id":1,"source":"module.exports = function (n) { return n * 100 };","deps":{}}
,
{"id":2,"source":"module.exports = function (n) { return n + 1 };","deps":{}}
,
{"id":3,"source":"var foo = require('./foo.js');\nvar bar = require('./bar.js');\n\nconsole.log(foo(3) + bar(4));","deps":{"./bar.js":1,"./foo.js":2},"entry":true}
]
This decomposition is needed by tools such as factor-bundle and bundle-collapser.
When loaded, plugins have access to the browserify instance itself.
Plugins should be used sparingly and only in cases where a transform or global transform is not powerful enough to perform the desired functionality.
You can load a plugin with -p on the command-line:
$ browserify main.js -p foo > bundle.js
would load a plugin called foo. foo is resolved with require(), so to load
a local file as a plugin, preface the path with a ./ and to load a plugin from
node_modules/foo, just do -p foo.
You can pass options to plugins with square brackets around the entire plugin expression, including the plugin name as the first argument:
$ browserify one.js two.js \
-p [ factor-bundle -o bundle/one.js -o bundle/two.js ] \
> common.js
This command-line syntax is parsed by the subarg package.
To see a list of browserify plugins, browse npm for packages with the keyword "browserify-plugin": http://npmjs.org/browse/keyword/browserify-plugin
To author a plugin, write a package that exports a single function that will receive a bundle instance and options object as arguments:
// example plugin
module.exports = function (b, opts) {
// ...
}
Plugins operate on the bundle instance b directly by listening for events or
splicing transforms into the pipeline. Plugins should not overwrite bundle
methods unless they have a very good reason.
FAQs
how to build modular applications with browserify
The npm package browserify-handbook receives a total of 5 weekly downloads. As such, browserify-handbook popularity was classified as not popular.
We found that browserify-handbook demonstrated a not healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released a year ago. It has 38 open source maintainers collaborating on the project.
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