An example compiling with almond.js

[paulwib]

I've not had much luck with the CDN/almond combination :(

My (broken) attempt at this is here: https://github.com/paulwib/example-jquery-cdn.

I'm not expecting the CDN file to be pulled down into the compiled file, but I am hoping that the 'jquery' module will be magically available. In my attempt I always get Uncaught Error: app/main missing jquery.

Any pointers as to what's going wrong? Is this even possible?

Thanks,

[jrburke]

It is not possible -- almond does not do dynamic loading, and if you use a script tag for jquery, almond will not see it, as it would either be too soon for almond (if placed before) or too late (if placed after). A dynamic loader, like require.js, is needed for CDN resources that are separate from the built files.

[paulwib]

Thanks for the answer, but just to clarify I wasn't expecting dynamic loading, the jquery is included with a script tag.

To give a bit more context I was using https://github.com/fgnass/spin.js which also has a jquery plug-in interface that will use define if it's available like define(['jquery'], factory). This works fine with regular require.js using data-main, but obviously not when you compile with almond as it doesn't know about any jquery module, because I use 'empty:' in the build script.

So instead I'm including the spin.js with a regular script tag, which works fine. I just wondered if I'd missed a way to tell almond where to find jquery.

Oh well :)

[jrburke]

Well, I suppose it would work if you insert the following into the built file (could set a build paths config to point 'jquery' to this sort of file):

define(function () {
  return jQuery;
});

That should work if jquery.js is loaded in the page before the built file with almond runs.

[paulwib]

Nice simple workaround, thanks. I added it to my fork - let me know if you're interested in a pull request (not sure if it's really appropriate for this example).

[jrburke]

Good to hear it worked. Right, I don't want to make the example description too complicated, but now we have this issue we can point others to if they have a question on this kind of approach.