NibJS

nib.js - Package CommonJS (Node.js) java/coffeescript libraries for the browser

nib.js is a library allowing to maintain javascript projects ala 'node.js' (CommonJS conventions about modules, exports, require) while also targetting the web browser as execution platform. It contains a simple packager command (nibjs) that will convert your sources to a single and minified .js file to be embedded in the browser. Node.js's exports and require are correctly resolved.

Getting started

gem install nibjs
nibjs --help 

See also the online presentation at http://blambeau.github.com/nib.js

How to use it

Let assume that your project has the structure below.

mylib/
  dist/
  lib/
    Foo.[js,coffee]          # exports.Foo = ...
    Bar.[js,coffee]          # require('./Foo')
    index.[js,coffee]        # exports.X = ...
  spec/
    foo_spec.[js,coffee]
    bar_spec.[js,coffee]
  package.json

EXAMPLE 1 (embedded javascript):

In a shell:

# if the sources are .js
nibjs --libname=mylib --output=dist/mylib.js lib

# if the sources are .coffee
nibjs --coffee --libname=mylib --output=dist/mylib.js lib

In the browser:

<script src="js/nibjs.js" type="text/javascript">
<script src="js/mylib.js" type="text/javascript">
<script>
  // mylib contains what index.[js,coffee] exports
  var mylib = NibJS.require('mylib')
</script>

EXAMPLE 2 (embedded coffeescript):

In a shell:

nibjs --coffee --no-coffee-compile --libname=mylib --output=dist/mylib.coffee lib

In the browser:

<script src="js/coffee-script.js" type="text/javascript">
<script src="js/nibjs.js" type="text/javascript">
<script src="js/mylib.coffee" type="text/coffeescript">
<script>
  /* But be warned of coffeescript's issue 1054
     https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/issues/#issue/1054 */
  var mylib = NibJS.require('mylib')
</script>

EXAMPLE 3 (get rid of nibjs.js):

In a shell:

nibjs --standalone --libname=mylib --output=dist/mylib.js lib

In the browser:

<script src="js/mylib.js" type="text/coffeescript">
<script>
  // NibJS is itself included in mylib.js
  var mylib = NibJS.require('mylib')
</script>

See also

This project is related to CommonJS Module specification. In a sense, it is an offline "compiler" implementation of the version 1.0 of that specification (not even complete). I'll strongly consider any patch that would lead to respecting such specification more completely!

• http://wiki.commonjs.org/wiki/Modules/1.0
• http://wiki.commonjs.org/wiki/Modules/CompiledModules

Other projects that implement the CommonJS module specification in a similar way:

• https://github.com/rsms/browser-require
• https://github.com/weepy/brequire
• https://github.com/afriggeri/ristretto