dependability

dependability

Dependable ordering of JS & CSS files during build and dynamically during development.

Getting started

Given two files: main.js and component.js. If order doesn't matter, do nothing. If you main.js needs component.js first simply add // tb_require("./component.js") to main.js.

To generate the order of files use list:

var dependability = require('dependability');
dependability.list(__dirname + "/src", { include: 'js' }, function(error, files){
    console.log("Files:", files); 
});

Or to merge the files together (e.g. to write to disk) use merged:

dependability.merged(__dirname + "/src", { include: 'js' }, function(error, javascript){
    fs.write(__dirname + "/build/output.js", javascript, fucntion(err){
        console.log("Built.");
    }); 
});

During development it's helpful to have the individual files in your browser's debugger. To make this easier dependability provides loaderScript to generate a script that will load the scripts in order.

http.createServer(function(req, res){
    if(req.url == "/myjavascript") {
        dependability.loaderScript(__dirname + "/src", { include: 'js', baseUrl: "/"  }, function(err, output){
            var out = new Buffer(output);
            res.writeHead(200, {
                "Content-Type": "application/javascript",
                "Content-Length": out.length
            });
            res.end(out);
        });
    } else {
        // deliver javascript files, e.g. using send()
    }
});

Using with express

dependability provides two helper functions to make using express easier.

loaderScriptExpress which uses loaderScript, and can be used like:

app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'src')));
app.get('/js/loaderScript.js', dependability.loaderScriptExpress({
  base: path.join(__dirname, 'src'),
  include: 'js', 
  baseUrl: "/"
}));

mergedExpress which uses merged, and can be used like:

app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'src')));
app.get('/js/loaderScript.js', dependability.mergedExpress({
  base: path.join(__dirname, 'src'),
  include: 'js'
}));

Using it with CSS

Simply use: include: 'css'. Wrap tb_require() statements in a CSS comment. Done!

Mode

By default the mode build is used. You can use the mode setting (passed in to the options for all of dependability's functions, e.g. { mode: "test" }), to either:

• include this file only in these modes:

// tb_only("build")
// tb_only("test")

• don't include this file in these modes:

// tb_skip("build")

Note: These are ignored if the file is tb_require()'d by another file!

All options

• relativePaths (default true). Paths given in the list and loaderScript file lists will be relative to the base path given. Can be set to false (full file system path) or another path (string) to make the paths relative to.
• baseUrl (default /) used only by loaderScript. Prepended to the relative path to create a full URL to the individual scripts.
• prefix (default tb) to use an alternative prefix (instead of tb) for tb_require, tb_skip, tb_only
• include (default nothing) can be either a string (e.g. js), an array (e.g. ["js", "jsc"]). Only files that match this extension will be considered when generating the list of files.