In addition to a collection of plugins, StealJS is comprised of two main components:
steal: an extensible, universal module loader.steal-tools: utilities for building, transforming, and exporting module formats.
This is the steal repository. For the tools, see https://github.com/stealjs/steal-tools.
steal is unique because it can load JavaScript modules defined in ES6, AMD, and CommonJS formats (unlike most other module loaders, which only support one of these formats at a time).
In JavaScript, the word "modules" refers to small units of independent, reusable code. They are the foundation of many JavaScript design patterns, and can look like this in ES6:
export function hello() {
console.log('hello');
}
export function goodbye() {
console.log('goodbye');
}Or like this in AMD:
define([], function() {
return {
hello: function() {
console.log('hello');
},
goodbye: function() {
console.log('goodbye');
}
};
});Or like this CommonJS:
function hello() {
console.log('hello');
}
function goodbye() {
console.log('goodbye');
}
module.exports = {
hello: hello,
goodbye: goodbye
}All of these formats are supported by steal, so you can mix and match modules in your project:
// ES6
import { hello, goodbye } from "greetings";
// AMD
define(["greetings"],function(greetings){ ... });
// CommonJS
var hello = require('greetings').hello;
var goodbye = require('greetings').goodbye;Additionally, plugins make it possible to load ANY module type you might come up with, such as Less or CSS. Anyone can write a plugin for steal to extend it's core module-loading functionality.
The StealJS organization maintains popular plugins that extend and enhance the module-loading capabilities of steal (and, subsequently, steal-tools) such as:
For example, the Less plugin allows Less files to be loaded similarly to JavaScript modules:
// ES6
import "style.less";
// AMD
define(["style.less"],function(){ ... });
// CommonJS
require("style.less");
// steal
steal("style.less")Looking to create a plugin for another format? See Writing Plugins.
For more information on StealJS, visit StealJS.com.
For information on contributing and developing, see the Contributing Guide on StealJS.com.
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