haxe-modular

Haxe Modular

Code splitting and hot-reload for Haxe JavaScript applications.

Why?

If you use Haxe for JavaScript, directly or indirectly (React, OpenFl,...), then you probably want to:

• make your web app load instantly,
• make your HTML5 game load quicker,
• load sections / features / mini-games on-demand.

Haxe has an excellent, compact and optimised JS output, but it's always a single file; even with good minification / gzip compression it can be a large payload.

Modular can split gigantic Haxe-JS outputs into load-on-demand features, without size/speed overhead, and without losing sourcemaps.

How?

import MyClass;
...
load(MyClass).then(function(_) {
	var c = new MyClass();
});

The approach is to reference one class asynchronously in your code:

• at compile time, the dependency graph of the class is built and one additional JS file will be emitted (bundling this class and all its dependencies),
• at run time, when the aynchronous reference is evaluated, the additional JS is loaded (once) automatically.

Where to start?

There are 2 ways to use Haxe Modular, depending on your project/toolchain/goals:

• standalone Modular; zero dependencies, for any Haxe-JS project,
• Webpack Haxe Loader; leverage the famous JS toolchain.

In both cases, it is advisable to read about the technical details:

• How to extract/split whole libraries?
• Using Reflection? Need more granular control of bundling?
• How does on-demand loading work at run time?

What is the difference?

Both solutions:

• use Modular splitting under the hood,
• split automatically using a single hxml build configuration,
• support NPM dependencies,
• allow hot-reloading of code.

What should I use?

• Standalone Modular is an easy, drop-in, addition to a regular Haxe JS build process - it is very lightweight and unobstrusive, and you don't need to learn Webpack.

  Using NPM modules however requires a bit of ceremony: all the NPM dependencies have to be gathered (manually) in a libs.js which is loaded upfront.

• Webpack Haxe Loader is a more powerful setup but you'll have to learn Webpack. Webpack is a complex and large system offering vast possibilities from the JS ecosystem.

FAQ

Q: Where can I get more help? I have questions / issues...

• Join haxe-modular chat on Gitter.im

Q: Is it only for React projects?

• Of course not; anything targeting JavaScript can use it.
• However it does offer React-specific additional features for code hot-reloading.

Q: Is it possible to minify the code?

• Yes, you can run a script minifying each of the resulting JS file - for instance using Closure Compiler in "simple" mode, or UglifyJS, including the mangle option which rename variables.
• Yes, you can use -lib closure (in "simple" mode); make sure -lib modular is defined first, and each individual JS bundle will be compressed automatically. Use -D modular_nocompress to disable Closure compression.

Q: Can I extract a library/package from my code?

• Yes: you can split libraries, but for technical reasons, extracting a library (e.g. many classes used across the application) has some limitations.

Q: Can I still use the includeFile macro to inject JS code in the output?

• Yes, but only when the code is inserted at the top of the file; this is the default position when using --macro includeFile('my-lib.js').