Require.js requires jquery-ui

[nkolban]

I am trying to load the plugin using require.js (AMD). Unfortunately, it gives me an error. Looking at the source, I see the following line:

define([ "jquery" ], factory )

which states that we have a dependency on jquery. This is fine but the plugin also uses jquery-ui which is where $.widget() comes from. I think that the plugin may need to be altered to have the following as a define:

define([ "jquery", "jquery-ui" ], factory )

[mar10]

From here http://learn.jquery.com/jquery-ui/environments/amd/ I would think we could even require

define([ "jquery-ui/menu" ], factory )

but how will this behave if jQuery UI 10.x or less is included?

[nkolban]

I'm guessing that there will be two cases. When the contextmenu initialization is reached, then either jQuery UI is present or its not. If it is present, then we need no AMD loading and there need be no dependency. This is the current assumption. If it is not present, THEN we can assume that we should perform an AMD dependency load and attempt to add it to the dependencies of the define.

If a user is not using AMD then it would already be an error NOT to have included jQuery UI before the context menu creation and we have maintained status-quo. However, if the user IS using AMD then we can assume that they are using a version of jQuery UI that is AMD compliant and a requirement against jQuery UI will be satisfied.

[mar10]

I was thinking about a case where users use AMD, but depend on jQuery UI 1.10 or before.
Currently, they can include jQuery UI directly (since AMD is not supported for this library) and use require.js for the rest.
But if we add this as AMD dependency, require.js will throw an exception?

I don't use require.js, so I may be wrong. Just trying to check the implications.

[nkolban]

When using AMD, we can provide configuration such that a module that is not AMD aware can still be made a dependency. This is achieved through the concept (in require.js) of "shims". What this means is that even if a module (such as pre jQuery UI 1.11) doesn't natively register itself in AMD, we can still mark is as being a usable dependency.

My thinking would be along the lines:

If I am using AMD then I would not want to explicitly include loads of scripts via <script> tags. Instead I would define them as dependencies and allow require.js to find them. If I am following that train of thought then I wouldn't be loading jQuery UI explicitly but instead using AMD to load it. At this time, if I am using a pre jQuery UI 1.11 version, I would then realize that I would need a "shim" and configure it as such.

As things stand today ... with the current code base, I am in a "limbo" state. If I am using AMD then I really want to avoid explicit <script> loads but yet the contextmenu package is requiring that I do just that because there is no dependency on jQuery UI.

If you wish, we can chat directly via kolban1@kolban.com and then via Skype or else we can bring in some require.js specialists to advise.

[mar10]

Thanks, I appreciate your efforts!
If you confirm that define([ "jquery-ui/menu" ], factory ) works for you, I will simply push it, (and see what happens ;-)

[mar10]

Comment by Kia Dabirian Tehrani

Hello Martin
I have now downloaded the latest release. However I still needed to modify line 15 to

    define([ "jquery", "jquery-ui/menu" ], factory );

. It seams that even though "jquery-ui/menu" is enough to load all the dependencies in the correct order (as can be seen in the network activity) it results in define passing $.ui.menu to the function at line 21 as the first argument. Where as that function expects the jQuery object to be passed to is on that slot