{
"main": "./js/entry.js",
"browser": {
"jquery": "./js/vendor/jquery.js"
},
"browserify-shim": {
"jquery": "$",
"three": "global:THREE"
},
"browserify": {
"transform": [ "browserify-shim" ]
},
"dependencies": {
"browserify-shim": "~3.2.0"
}
}
browserify . -d -o bundle.js
Table of Contents generated with DocToc
- Installation
- Features
- API
- Multi Shim Example including dependencies
- More Examples
npm install browserify-shim
For a version compatible with [email protected] run npm install [email protected]
instead.
For a version compatible with the v2 API npm install [email protected]
instead.
The core features of browserify-shim are:
- Shims non-CommonJS modules in order for them to be browserified by specifying an alias, the path to the file,
and the identifier under which the module attaches itself to the global
window
object. - Includes
depends
for shimming libraries that depend on other libraries being in the global namespace. - applies shims configured inside the dependencies of your package
Additionally, it handles the following real-world edge cases:
- Modules that just declare a
var foo = ...
on the script level and assume it gets attached to thewindow
object. Since the only way they will ever be run is in the global context โ "ahem, โฆ NO?!" - Makes
define
and alsomodule
beundefined
, in order to fix improperly-authored libraries that need shimming but try anyway to use AMD or CommonJS. For more info read the comment inside this fixture - removes invalid requires, i.e.
require('jquery')
although'jquery'
isn't installed due to the library being improperly published or installed incorrectly via a downloader like bower
Since browserify-shim
is a proper browserify
transform you can publish packages with files that need to be shimmed,
granted that you specify the shim config inside the package.json
.
When browserify
resolves your package it will run the browserify-shim
transform and thus shim what's necessary
when generating the bundle.
In most cases you want to install it as a devDependency via:
npm install -D browserify-shim
Inside package.json
add:
{
"browserify": {
"transform": [ "browserify-shim" ]
}
}
Inside package.json
add:
{
"browserify-shim": {
"./js/vendor/jquery.js": "$",
"three": "global:THREE"
}
}
The above includes ./js/vendor/jquery.js
(relative to the package.json
) in the bundle and exports window.$
.
Additionally it exposes window.THREE
as three
, so you can var three = require('three')
. More info
below.
Since jquery
does not depend on other shimmed modules and thus has no depends
field, we used the short form to
specify its exports, however the example above is equivalent to:
{
"browserify-shim": {
"./js/vendor/jquery.js": { "exports": "$" }
}
}
In some cases the libraries you are using are very large and you'd prefer to add them via a script tag instead to get the following benefits:
- faster bundling times since the library is not included in the bundle
- pull libraries from a CDN which allows it to be pulled straight from the user's browser cache in case it was downloaded before
We'll show how this works by taking the rather huge yet awesome THREE.js
library as an example:
<!-- index.html -->
<head>
<meta charset=utf-8 />
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/three.js/r61/three.min.js"></script>
</head>
{
"browserify-shim": {
"three": "global:THREE"
}
}
In case you are using an external shim config, you may achieve the same by specifying the global via an export
.
module.exports = {
'three.js': { exports: 'global:THREE' }
}
more about external configs here
Note: THREE.js
attaches window.THREE
.
var THREE = require('three');
You want to avoid spreading the knowledge that THREE
is a global and stay consistent in how you resolve dependencies.
Additionally if THREE
would ever be published to npm and you decide to install it from there,
you don't have to change any of your code since it already is require
ing it properly.
You may expose files under a different name via the browser
field and refer to them under that alias in the shim config:
{
"browser": {
"jquery": "./js/vendor/jquery.js"
},
"browserify-shim": {
"jquery": "$"
}
}
This also allows you to require this module under the alias, i.e.: var $ = require('jquery')
.
{
"browserify-shim": "./config/shim.js"
}
The external shim format is very similar to the way in which the shim is specified inside the package.json
. See
below for more details.
You may encounter problems when your shim config isn't properly setup. In that case you can diagnose them via the
BROWSERIFYSHIM_DIAGNOSTICS
flag.
Simply set the flag when building your bundle, i.e.:
BROWSERIFYSHIM_DIAGNOSTICS=1 browserify -d . -o js/bundle.js
or in a build.js
script add: process.env.BROWSERIFYSHIM_DIAGNOSTICS=1
to the top.
Some libraries depend on other libraries to have attached their exports to the window for historical reasons :(. (Hopefully soon we can truly say that this bad design is history.)
In this contrived example we are shimming four libraries since none of them are commonJS compatible:
- x exports window.$
- x-ui exports nothing since it just attaches itself to x. Therefore x-ui depends on x.
- y exports window.Y and also depends on x expecting to find it on the window as $.
- z exports window.zorro and depends on x and y. It expects to find x on the window as $, but y on the window as YNOT, which is actually different than the name under which y exports itself.
We will be using the depends
field in order to ensure that a dependency is included and initialized before a library
that depends on it is initialized.
Below are three examples, each showing a way to properly shim the above mentioned modules.
{
"browserify": {
"transform": [ "browserify-shim" ]
},
"browserify-shim": {
"./vendor/x.js" : "$",
"./vendor/x-ui.js" : { "depends": [ "./vendor/x.js" ] },
"./vendor/y.js" : { "exports": "Y", "depends": [ "./vendor/x.js:$" ] },
"./vendor/z.js" : { "exports": "zorro", "depends": [ "./vendor/x.js:$", "./vendor/y.js:YNOT" ] }
}
}
Note: the depends
array consists of entries of the format path-to-file:export
{
"browserify": {
"transform": [ "browserify-shim" ]
},
"browser": {
"x" : "./vendor/x.js",
"x-ui" : "./vendor/x-ui.js",
"y" : "./vendor/y.js",
"z" : "./vendor/z.js"
},
"browserify-shim": {
"x" : "$",
"x-ui" : { "depends": [ "x" ] },
"y" : { "exports": "Y", "depends": [ "x:$" ] },
"z" : { "exports": "zorro", "depends": [ "x:$", "y:YNOT" ] }
}
}
Note: the depends
entries make use of the aliases as well alias:export
{
"browserify": {
"transform": [ "browserify-shim" ]
},
"browserify-shim": "./config/shim.js"
}
module.exports = {
'../vendor/x.js' : { 'exports': '$' },
'../vendor/x-ui.js' : { 'depends': { '../vendor/x.js': null } },
'../vendor/y.js' : { 'exports': 'Y', 'depends': { '../vendor/x.js': '$' } },
'../vendor/z.js' : { 'exports': 'zorro', 'depends': { '../vendor/x.js': '$', '../vendor/y.js': 'YNOT' } }
}
Note: all paths are relative to ./config/shim.js
instead of the package.json
.
The main difference to a)
is the depends
field specification. Instead it being an array of strings it expresses its dependencies as a hashmap:
- key:
path-to-file
- value: the name under which it is expected to be attached on the window
- shim-jquery
- expose-jquery
- shim-jquery-external
- the tests are a great resource to investigate the
different ways to configure shims and to understand how shims are applied to packages found inside the
node_modules
of your package