There are already wrappers such as brunch that offer to watch and rebuild all your client side files, and optionally launch a server for you. I wanted to launch my server and have it watch my client files and rebuild them (as well as itself, see piping)
Piping-browser uses browserify to package up your client side modules using commonjs. Browserify also gives us sourcemaps and support for node modules for free!
npm install piping-browser
Piping-browser is not a binary, so you can continue using your current workflow for running your application ("wooo!"). Basic usage is as follows:
require("piping-browser")({main:"./client/scripts/main.js",out:"./public/application.js"});- main (path): The path to the entry point of your application. this file is automatically executed on load. Relative to the file where piping-browser was required
- out (path): The path to where you want your bundled code to be written to. Relative to the file where piping-browser was required
- ignore (regex): Files/paths matching this regex will not be watched. Defaults to
/(\/\.|~$)/ - watch (boolean): Whether or not piping should rebuild on changes. Defaults to true, could be set to false for production
- debug (boolean): Whether browserify should run in debug mode or not. Debug mode turns on source maps. Defaults to true
- minify (boolean): Whether browserify should minify output with UglifyJS. Source maps for minified output are currently not working right, and are mostly disabled regardless of debug option.
- vendor (object): Specify configuration for building vendor files. Vendor files are concatenated in order and then minified if minify is true, and written to the given path.
- path (string): Directory where vendor files are located, relative to file where piping-browser was required
- out (string): Path where vendor ouput should be written, relative to the file where piping-browser was required
- files (array): Array of vendor files, relative to vendor path.
- build (object): An object that maps file extensions, eg "coffee" to functions that take a filename and the files data and compiles it to javascript. By default can compile coffeescript files, with sourcemaps.
Piping-browser can also be used just by passing two strings. In this case, the strings are taken as the main and out options
require("piping-browser")("./client/scripts/main.js","./public/application.js");piping-browser plays nice with piping. To use it, ensure piping-browser is required when piping returns false:
if(!require("piping")()){
require("piping-browser")("./client/scripts/main.js","./public/application.js");
return;
}
// application logic here