Browserify in examples about flux

[fisherwebdev]

Browserify helps us do modular development in the browser with the CommonJS module system. It will also do the JSX and ES6 transpilation for us. As such, it has a lot of value, and to some extent, the code depends on it.

The examples were written not only to show people how to use Flux, but also to point the way toward "best practices". JSX, CommonJS and ES6 are, in my opinion, best practices for Flux. I don' t want to recommend other package managers or module systems, as I believe that npm and CommonJS are currently the best options that the open source community has.

If at some point we decide to switch from CommonJS to ES6 modules, then we'll update all the code that is helping us with CommonJS.

However, I do understand that this may be a barrier for some folks, and I'd happily entertain a more fleshed out idea for a new, extremely basic example for newcomers. Please let me know what were the biggest hurdles for you, and we can take a look at what we could do to make things easier.

[briandipalma]

I can't imagine large scale Web app development without using a module system and loader. It would be a step back to remove those. If people find those complex their use case might not need patterns like flux, a simpler approach might be as productive.

[EvanCarroll]

There is nothing in the docs about it. I had to grep bundle.js to find mention as a comment in a separate example that it dealt with Browserify. I still have no idea what Browserify does or why it's needed.

Backbone for example doesn't this at all -- and flux is supposed to be a replacement, no?

[briandipalma]

Maybe the documentation needs to mention that the examples use a CJS loader. You can use either Browserify or WebPack and if you don't know what they are I recommend spending some time reading up on them. Do you still load all your JS/CSS etc by creating script and link tags? That's painful to scale so you might find these module loaders helpful.

[totty90]

Here is an example: https://github.com/totty90/jogabo-flux-react

[fisherwebdev]

I would consider the Flux TodoMVC tutorial to be a core part of the documentation, and Browserify, bundle.js, etc. are clearly explained there. I do apologize that this was difficult for you. But I encourage you to give it another try! It really is a nice way to work, once you get it set up.

In the mean time, I'll put together another, even simpler example very soon.