Connect-assets-jspaths NPM

connect-assets-jspaths

An NPM module for outputting your connect-assets javascript assets. Useful for working with requireJS.

Problems This Helps With

You're using requireJS and need to update the location of your modules after they have become minified and hashed.
You're using requireJS and need to get the url of a particular file to add as the data-main attribute of your script reference.

Installation

npm install connect-assets-jspaths

Note, there is a dependency on CoffeeScript.

Server Side Usage

assets = require "connect-assets"
jsPaths = require "connect-assets-jspaths"

# Snip ...

app.use assets()
# Exports the global function exportPaths() and jsUrl(); see below in View Helpers.
jsPaths assets

# Optionally, pass a log function to see progress
# jsPaths assets, console.log

Watch changes and re-compile

Now you can pass some additional callbacks in and it will monitor your connect assets directories for changes.

fileChangedCallback = (err, filePath) ->
    console.log "File Changed: #{filePath}"

jsPaths assets, console.log, fileChangedCallback, (err, watcher) ->
    console.log "Watcher initialized"

NOTE You'll probably want to disable this for production mode.

View Usage

This module exports two global functions exportPaths() and jsUrl().

// Using this in your view
!= exportPaths("jsPaths")

// Turns into this when rendered in production
<script type="text/javascript">
    var jsPaths = { "main", "/builtAssets/js/main.13819282742.js" /* snip all the other file paths */ };
</script>


// Using this in your view
- var mainJsPath = jsUrl("/js/main.js")
script(type="text/javascript", data-main="#{mainJsPath}", src="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/require.js/2.0.2/require.min.js")    

// Turns into this when rendered in production
<script type="text/javascript" data-main="/builtAssets/js/main.13819282742.js" src="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/require.js/2.0.2/require.min.js"></script>

Dynamic RequireJS Paths

Now that we have a variable with our requireJS friendly paths in it, we can set those paths in the RequireJS config

# Example main.coffee file in /assets/js folder

requirePaths =
  paths:
    jquery: "//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.2/jquery.min"
    underscore: "//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/underscore.js/1.3.3/underscore-min"
    backbone: "//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/backbone.js/0.9.2/backbone-min"
    text: "/js/lib/text"
    handlebars: "/js/lib/handlebars"
    
if jsPaths
  for own key, value of jsPaths
    # Fix up the lib references
    key = key.slice 4 if key.slice(0, 4) == "lib/"
    requirePaths.paths[key] = value 

require.config
  paths: requirePaths.paths

  shim:
    jquery:
      exports: "$"
    underscore:
      exports: "_"
    backbone:
      deps: ["underscore", "jquery"]
      exports: "Backbone"
    
require ['app'], (App) ->
    new App().initialize()