Client_require NPM

Client Require

This library allows you to run your Node.JS application on the client side using standard CommonJS module syntax. It supports loading client files from dependency NPM packages and easily branching between client and server modules when necessary.

In development mode, loaded package files will present error messages in the browser which match the filename and line number of the related server-side file.

In production mode, packages will be placed within a single closure with no leaking scope.

Usage

In your package.json, list your dependencies as you normally would, and add an additional configuration field called "client_dependencies", which is a list of module names.

{
	"main": "app.js",
	"dependencies": {
		"client_require": "*",
		"uuid-v4": "*"
	}
	"client_dependencies": ['uuid-v4']
}

Type npm install as usual to install the dependencies.

In your Node.js app, pass an instance of your HTTP server to fhtagn:

var client_require = require('client_require');

var http = require('http');
var app  = http.createServer(function (req, res) {
	var out = "<html><head>";
	client_require.getScripts(function(e, srcs) {
		for (var i in srcs) {
			out += '<script src="'+srcs[i]+'"></script>';
		}
		out += "</head><body>Ia! Ia!</body></html>";
		res.end(out);
	});
}).listen(3000, 'localhost');

client_require.listen(app);

Client/Server Alternation

If you want to have separate versions of particular files for the client and the server, you can do so by placing the module in a directory called client/ or server/, respectively.

Example:

server/
	app.js
client/
	app.js

This will create a module file at the root path app.js. client/app.js will be loaded on the client and server/app.js will be loaded on the server.

On the server-side, you must use the require method exported by the library to properly load server-side files.

API Methods

getScripts

Will callback with an array of script srcs to inject into the page, in order.

listen

Attaches a request event to the HTTP server to serve files which start with the provided web_root configuration.

require

This is useful on the server-side, as the standard require function is not able to be overloaded. This will make sure you load server/foo.js when there is no root foo.js available, which mimicks the client-side functionality.