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How can I run a Python function with JavaScript and HTML? [duplicate]

I am writing an application with the Node.js, Express.js, and Jade combination.
I have file client.js, which is loaded on the client. In that file I have code that calls functions from other JavaScript files. My attempt was to use
var m = require('./messages');
in order to load the contents of messages.js (just like I do on the server side) and later on call functions from that file. However, require is not defined on the client side, and it throws an error of the form Uncaught ReferenceError: require is not defined.
These other JavaScript files are also loaded at runtime at the client, because I place the links at the header of the webpage. So the client knows all the functions that are exported from these other files.
How do I call these functions from these other JavaScript files (such as messages.js) in the main client.js file that opens the socket to the server?

This is because require() does not exist in the browser/client-side JavaScript.
Now you're going to have to make some choices about your client-side JavaScript script management.
You have three options:
Use the <script> tag.
Use a CommonJS implementation. It has synchronous dependencies like Node.js
Use an asynchronous module definition (AMD) implementation.
CommonJS client side-implementations include (most of them require a build step before you deploy):
Browserify - You can use most Node.js modules in the browser. This is my personal favorite.
Webpack - Does everything (bundles JavaScript code, CSS, etc.). It was made popular by the surge of React, but it is notorious for its difficult learning curve.
Rollup - a new contender. It leverages ES6 modules and includes tree-shaking abilities (removes unused code).
You can read more about my comparison of Browserify vs (deprecated) Component.
AMD implementations include:
RequireJS - Very popular amongst client-side JavaScript developers. It is not my taste because of its asynchronous nature.
Note, in your search for choosing which one to go with, you'll read about Bower. Bower is only for package dependencies and is unopinionated on module definitions like CommonJS and AMD.

I am coming from an Electron environment, where I need IPC communication between a renderer process and the main process. The renderer process sits in an HTML file between script tags and generates the same error.
The line
const {ipcRenderer} = require('electron')
throws the Uncaught ReferenceError: require is not defined
I was able to work around that by specifying Node.js integration as true when the browser window (where this HTML file is embedded) was originally created in the main process.
function createAddItemWindow() {
// Create a new window
addItemWindown = new BrowserWindow({
width: 300,
height: 200,
title: 'Add Item',
// The lines below solved the issue
webPreferences: {
nodeIntegration: true,
contextIsolation: false
}
})}
That solved the issue for me. The solution was proposed here.

ES6: In HTML, include the main JavaScript file using attribute type="module" (browser support):
<script type="module" src="script.js"></script>
And in the script.js file, include another file like this:
import { hello } from './module.js';
...
// alert(hello());
Inside the included file (module.js), you must export the function/class that you will import:
export function hello() {
return "Hello World";
}
A working example is here. More information is here.

Replace all require statements with import statements. Example:
// Before:
const Web3 = require('web3');
// After:
import Web3 from 'web3';
It worked for me.

In my case I used another solution.
As the project doesn't require CommonJS and it must have ES3 compatibility (modules not supported) all you need is just remove all export and import statements from your code, because your tsconfig doesn't contain
"module": "commonjs"
But use import and export statements in your referenced files
import { Utils } from "./utils"
export interface Actions {}
Final generated code will always have(at least for TypeScript 3.0) such lines
"use strict";
exports.__esModule = true;
var utils_1 = require("./utils");
....
utils_1.Utils.doSomething();

This worked for me
Get the latest release from the RequireJS download page
It is the file for RequestJS which is what we will use.
Load it into your HTML content like this:
<script data-main="your-script.js" src="require.js"></script>
Notes!
Use require(['moudle-name']) in your-script.js,
not require('moudle-name')
Use const {ipcRenderer} = require(['electron']),
not const {ipcRenderer} = require('electron')

Even using this won't work. I think the best solution is Browserify:
module.exports = {
func1: function () {
console.log("I am function 1");
},
func2: function () {
console.log("I am function 2");
}
};
-getFunc1.js-
var common = require('./common');
common.func1();

window = new BrowserWindow({
webPreferences: {
nodeIntegration: true,
contextIsolation: false
}
});

I confirm. We must add:
webPreferences: {
nodeIntegration: true
}
For example:
mainWindow = new BrowserWindow({webPreferences: {
nodeIntegration: true
}});
For me, the problem has been resolved with that.

People are asking what is the script tag method. Here it is:
<script src='./local.js'></script>.
Or from network:
<script src='https://mycdn.com/myscript.js'></script>
You need plugin the right url for your script.

I was trying to build metronic using webpack. In my package.json I had to remove the "type": "module" section.

Loading a third-party javascript library

I developed a web radio player using Vue Cli. Now I have to add a new functionality using an external library (it's aimed to handle audio advertising) and this library must be served from the remote host. I can't just download the library and import it locally.
Setup
In my Vue App I have several components and in one of them I have an audio tag handling the radio playback. I need to detect the click on the play button, load the ad, play it and then go to the radio regular playback.
Approachs I tried
Loading the external library in the index.html file. It works but I can't interact with the player being loaded in Vue. For example, if I try to listen to the play event in the index.html file (audio.addEventListener("play", onPlay);, I just receive "audio not defined" in the web console.
Loading the external library in the mounted () section of my component:
const triton = document.createElement('script')
triton.setAttribute('src', '//sdk.listenlive.co/web/2.9/td-sdk.min.js')
document.head.appendChild(triton)
this.initPlayerSDK()
triton.onload = () => {
let player = new TDSdk(this.tdPlayerConfig)
console.log(player)
}
The problem with this approach is that after npm run serveI receive the message 'TDSdk' is not defined which makes complete sense. I'm loading the external JS file but webpack isn't interpreting its content because that it's done in runtime. I have to add the external in my vue.config.js, but this doesn't work neither:
vue.config.js
const path = require('path')
module.exports = {
publicPath: './',
/*configureWebpack: {
externals: {
tdSdk: 'tdSdk'
}
},*/
chainWebpack: config => {
config.module
.rule('images')
.test(/\.(png|jpe?g|gif|webp)(\?.*)?$/)
.use('url-loader')
.loader('file-loader') // not url-loader but file-loader !
.tap((options) => { // not .option() but .tap(options...)
// modify the options...
options.name = 'img/[name].[ext]'
return options
}),
config.externals([
{
'tdSdk': 'TDSdk'
},
])
},
css: {
loaderOptions: {
sass: {
sassOptions: {
includePaths: [path.resolve(__dirname, './node_modules/compass-mixins/lib')]
}
}
}
},
externals: {
tdSdk: 'TDSdk'
}
}
myComponent.vue
import tdSdk from 'tdSdk'

My solution was to load the library in the public/index.html file and then wait for the DOM being loaded so I could add the event listener to the audio element already loaded:
document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function() {
var playControl = document.getElementById('playIcon');
playControl.addEventListener("click", onPlay);
}
Then, in the Vuex store I needed to access the variables defined in the javascript located in the index.html. To do that, I set the window.adState (the var I'm using) as a global var in my store file:
Vuex.Store.prototype.$adState = window.adState
Finally, in my actions/mutations I used this.$adState to check its content:
playPause ({ commit, dispatch }) {
console.log('AdState', this.$adState)
(...)
}
Answer added on behalf of OP.

The import cannot be resolved at the time when the script is evaluated because TDSdk global is not available. A script that is dynamically added to head is loaded asynchronously so there will be race condition any way.
<script> needs to be added dynamically if there's dynamic behaviour involved or like a condition or a developer doesn't have control over page layout. For static script, Vue CLI project's public index.html can be modified:
<body>
<div id="app"></div>
<script src="//sdk.listenlive.co/web/2.9/td-sdk.min.js"></script>
<!-- built files will be auto injected -->
</body>
Application bundle is evaluated after the script and the global is expected to be available there.
Externals are commonly used for packages that were swapped to ones that were externally loaded, usually from CDN. Since tdSdk is not a real package and has no prospects to be swapped for one, it doesn't serve a good purpose to map it to a global and import it. It can be just used as TDSdk global in the application.

How to include manual import() in Webpack Bundle

I am quite new to Webpack, so bear with me if thats a stupid question.
My goal is to transform my old, AMD based codebase to a ES6 Module based solution. What I am struggling with is handling dynamic import()s. So my app router works on a module basis, i.e. each route is mapped to a module path and then required. Since I know what modules will be included, I just add those dynamically imported modules to my r.js configuration and am able to build everything in a single file, with all require calls still working.
Now, I am trying to do the same with ES6 modules and Webpack. With my devmode this is no problem as I can just replace require() with import(). However I cannot get this to work with bundling. Either Webpack splits my code (and still fails to load the dynamic module anyways), or - if I use the Array format for the entry config, the dynamic module is included in the bundle but loading still fails: Error: Cannot find module '/src/app/DynClass.js'
This is how my Webpack config looks like:
const webpack = require('webpack');
const path = require('path');
module.exports = {
mode: "development",
entry: ['./main.js', './app/DynClass.js'],
output: {
filename: 'main.js',
path: path.resolve(__dirname, "../client/")
},
resolve: {
alias: {
"/src": path.resolve(__dirname, '')
}
},
module: {
rules: [
{
test: /\.tpl$/i,
use: 'raw-loader',
},
]
}
};
So basically I want to tell Webpack: "hey, there is another module (or more) that is to be loaded dynamically and I want it to be included in the bundle"
How can I do this?

So yeah, after much fiddling there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel. Still, this is not a 100% solution and it is surely not for the faint of heart, as it is quite ugly and fragile. But still I want to share my approach with you:
1) manual parsing of my routes config
My router uses a config file looking like this:
import StaticClass from "/src/app/StaticClass.js";
export default {
StaticClass: {
match: /^\//,
module: StaticClass
},
DynClass: {
match: /^\//,
module: "/src/app/DynClass.js"
}
};
So as you can see the export is an object, with keys acting as the route id, and an object that contains the matches (regex based) and the module which should be executed by the router if the route matches. I can feed my router with both a Constructor function (or an object) for modules which are available immediatly (i.e. contained in the main chunk) or if the module value is a string, this means that the router has to load this module dynamically by using the path specified in the string.
So as I know what modules could be potentially loaded (but not if and when) I can now parse this file within my build process and transform the route config to something webpack can understand:
const path = require("path");
const fs = require("fs");
let routesSource = fs.readFileSync(path.resolve(__dirname, "app/routes.js"), "utf8");
routesSource = routesSource.substr(routesSource.indexOf("export default"));
routesSource = routesSource.replace(/module:\s*((?!".*").)*$/gm, "module: undefined,");
routesSource = routesSource.replace(/\r?\n|\r/g, "").replace("export default", "var routes = ");
eval(routesSource);
let dummySource = Object.entries(routes).reduce((acc, [routeName, routeConfig]) => {
if (typeof routeConfig.module === "string") {
return acc + `import(/* webpackChunkName: "${routeName}" */"${routeConfig.module}");`;
}
return acc;
}, "") + "export default ''";
(Yeah I know this is quite ugly and also a bit brittle so this surely could be done better)
Essentially I create a new, virtual module where every route entry which demands a dynamic import is translated, so:
DynClass: {
match: /^\//,
module: "/src/app/DynClass.js"
}
becomes:
import(/* webpackChunkName: "DynClass" */"/src/app/DynClass.js");
So the route id simply becomes the name of the chunk!
2) including the virtual module in the build
For this I use the virtual-module-webpack-plugin:
plugins: [
new VirtualModulePlugin({
moduleName: "./app/dummy.js",
contents: dummySource
})
],
Where dummySource is just a string containing the sourcecode of my virtual module I just have generated. Now, this module is pulled in and the "virtual imports" can be processed by webpack. But wait, I still need to import the dummy module, but I do not have any in my development mode (where I use everything natively, so no loaders).
So in my main code I do the following:
let isDev = false;
/** #remove */
isDev = true;
/** #endremove */
if (isDev) { import('./app/dummy.js'); }
Where "dummy.js" is just an empty stub module while I am in development mode. The parts between that special comments are removed while building (using the webpack-loader-clean-pragma loader), so while webpack "sees" the import for dummy.js, this code will not be executed in the build itself since then isDev evaluates to false. And since we already defined a virtual module with the same path, the virtual module is included while building just like I want, and of course all dependencies are resolved as well.
3) Handling the actual loading
For development, this is quite easy:
import routes from './app/routes.js';
Object.entries(routes).forEach(async ([routeId, route]) => {
if (typeof route.module === "function") {
new route.module;
} else {
const result = await import(route.module);
new result.default;
}
});
(Note that this is not the actual router code, just enough to help me with my PoC)
Well, but for the build I need something else, so I added some code specific to the build environment:
/** #remove */
const result = await import(route.module);
new result.default;
/** #endremove */
if (!isDev) {
if (typeof route.module === "string") { await __webpack_require__.e(routeId); }
const result = __webpack_require__(route.module.replace("/src", "."));
new result.default;
}
Now, the loading code for the dev environment is just stripped out, and there is another loading code that uses webpack internally. I also check if the module value is a function or string, and if it is the latter I invoke the internal require.ensure function to load the correct chunk: await __webpack_require__.e(routeId);. Remember that I named my chunks when generating the virtual module? Now thats why I still can find them now!
4) more needs to be done
Another thing I encountered is when several dynamically loaded modules have the same dependencies, webpack tries to generate more chunks with names like module1~module2.bundle.js, breaking my build. To counter this, I needed to make sure that all those shared modules go into a specific named bundle I called "shared":
optimization: {
splitChunks: {
chunks: "all",
name: "shared"
}
}
And when in production mode, I simply load this chunk manually before any dynamic modules depending on it are requested:
if (!isDev) {
await __webpack_require__.e("shared");
}
Again, this code only runs in production mode!
Finally, I have to prevent webpack renaming my modules (and chunks) to something like "1", "2" etc, but rather keep the names I just have defined:
optimization: {
namedChunks: true,
namedModules: true
}
Se yeah, there you have it! As I said this wasn't pretty but seems to work, at least with my simplified test setup. I really hope there aren't any blockers ahead of me when I do all the rest (like ESLint, SCSS etc)!

Webpack - how do I make compiled functions available in HTML documents?

I've got a webpack script
const webpack = require('webpack');
const path = require('path');
module.exports = (env, options) => ({
entry: "./clickscape.js",
output: {
path: path.resolve(__dirname, '../priv/static/js'),
filename: 'clickscape-bundle.js'
},
plugins: [
new webpack.ProvidePlugin({
$: 'jquery',
jQuery: 'jquery'
})
]
})
that generates a bundle. Inside my clickscape.js, there are functions that I want to be able to access in the HTML page in which the bundle is loaded, i.e.:
<script src="http://localhost:4000/js/clickscape-bundle.js"></script>
<script>do_something_clickscape_dot_js()</script>
It seems that because webpack obfuscates all the code it compiles, it's not obvious what to call outside it.
What do I need to do to make my calls work?

Unless such a variable is global, you can't. Which generally is a good thing as it prevents name collisions between your own variables and those of other (external) scripts.
Inside my clickscape.js, there are functions that I want to be able to
access in the HTML page in which the bundle is loaded (...)
If you necessarily want to access them in the HTML page, you could make them global in ./clickscape.js:
window.do_something_clickscape_dot_js = function() {
// your code
}
Now do_something_clickscape_dot_js() works in your HTML page. But why not call it directly in ./clickscape.js?
const do_something_clickscape_dot_js = () => {
// do something here
}
/*
* calling the function in this file has same effect as calling it
* in script tag in the HTML page
*/
do_something_clickscape_dot_js();
I can't think of a use case where you necessarily want to call it in the HTML page, but if you want to: go for a global.

Define global variable with webpack

Is it possible to define a global variable with webpack to result something like this:
var myvar = {};
All of the examples I saw were using external file require("imports?$=jquery!./file.js")

There are several way to approach globals:
1. Put your variables in a module.
Webpack evaluates modules only once, so your instance remains global and carries changes through from module to module. So if you create something like a globals.js and export an object of all your globals then you can import './globals' and read/write to these globals. You can import into one module, make changes to the object from a function and import into another module and read those changes in a function. Also remember the order things happen. Webpack will first take all the imports and load them up in order starting in your entry.js. Then it will execute entry.js. So where you read/write to globals is important. Is it from the root scope of a module or in a function called later?
config.js
export default {
FOO: 'bar'
}
somefile.js
import CONFIG from './config.js'
console.log(`FOO: ${CONFIG.FOO}`)
Note: If you want the instance to be new each time, then use an ES6 class. Traditionally in JS you would capitalize classes (as opposed to the lowercase for objects) like
import FooBar from './foo-bar' // <-- Usage: myFooBar = new FooBar()
2. Use Webpack's ProvidePlugin.
Here's how you can do it using Webpack's ProvidePlugin (which makes a module available as a variable in every module and only those modules where you actually use it). This is useful when you don't want to keep typing import Bar from 'foo' again and again. Or you can bring in a package like jQuery or lodash as global here (although you might take a look at Webpack's Externals).
Step 1. Create any module. For example, a global set of utilities would be handy:
utils.js
export function sayHello () {
console.log('hello')
}
Step 2. Alias the module and add to ProvidePlugin:
webpack.config.js
var webpack = require("webpack");
var path = require("path");
// ...
module.exports = {
// ...
resolve: {
extensions: ['', '.js'],
alias: {
'utils': path.resolve(__dirname, './utils') // <-- When you build or restart dev-server, you'll get an error if the path to your utils.js file is incorrect.
}
},
plugins: [
// ...
new webpack.ProvidePlugin({
'utils': 'utils'
})
]
}
Now just call utils.sayHello() in any js file and it should work. Make sure you restart your dev-server if you are using that with Webpack.
Note: Don't forget to tell your linter about the global, so it won't complain. For example, see my answer for ESLint here.
3. Use Webpack's DefinePlugin.
If you just want to use const with string values for your globals, then you can add this plugin to your list of Webpack plugins:
new webpack.DefinePlugin({
PRODUCTION: JSON.stringify(true),
VERSION: JSON.stringify("5fa3b9"),
BROWSER_SUPPORTS_HTML5: true,
TWO: "1+1",
"typeof window": JSON.stringify("object")
})
Use it like:
console.log("Running App version " + VERSION);
if(!BROWSER_SUPPORTS_HTML5) require("html5shiv");
4. Use the global window object (or Node's global).
window.foo = 'bar' // For SPA's, browser environment.
global.foo = 'bar' // Webpack will automatically convert this to window if your project is targeted for web (default), read more here: https://webpack.js.org/configuration/node/
You'll see this commonly used for polyfills, for example: window.Promise = Bluebird
5. Use a package like dotenv.
(For server side projects) The dotenv package will take a local configuration file (which you could add to your .gitignore if there are any keys/credentials) and adds your configuration variables to Node's process.env object.
// As early as possible in your application, require and configure dotenv.
require('dotenv').config()
Create a .env file in the root directory of your project. Add environment-specific variables on new lines in the form of NAME=VALUE. For example:
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_USER=root
DB_PASS=s1mpl3
That's it.
process.env now has the keys and values you defined in your .env file.
var db = require('db')
db.connect({
host: process.env.DB_HOST,
username: process.env.DB_USER,
password: process.env.DB_PASS
})
Notes
Regarding Webpack's Externals, use it if you want to exclude some modules from being included in your built bundle. Webpack will make the module globally available but won't put it in your bundle. This is handy for big libraries like jQuery (because tree shaking external packages doesn't work in Webpack) where you have these loaded on your page already in separate script tags (perhaps from a CDN).

I was about to ask the very same question. After searching a bit further and decyphering part of webpack's documentation I think that what you want is the output.library and output.libraryTarget in the webpack.config.js file.
For example:
js/index.js:
var foo = 3;
var bar = true;
webpack.config.js
module.exports = {
...
entry: './js/index.js',
output: {
path: './www/js/',
filename: 'index.js',
library: 'myLibrary',
libraryTarget: 'var'
...
}
Now if you link the generated www/js/index.js file in a html script tag you can access to myLibrary.foo from anywhere in your other scripts.

Use DefinePlugin.
The DefinePlugin allows you to create global constants which can be
configured at compile time.
new webpack.DefinePlugin(definitions)
Example:
plugins: [
new webpack.DefinePlugin({
PRODUCTION: JSON.stringify(true)
})
//...
]
Usage:
console.log(`Environment is in production: ${PRODUCTION}`);

You can use define window.myvar = {}.
When you want to use it, you can use like window.myvar = 1

DefinePlugin doesn't actually define anything. What it does is replace variables that exist in your bundle code. If the variable doesn't exist in your code, it will do nothing. So it doesn't create global variables.
In order to create a global variable, write it in your code:
window.MyGlobal = MY_GLOBAL;
And use DefinePlugin to replace MY_GLOBAL with some code:
new webpack.DefinePlugin({
'MY_GLOBAL': `'foo'`,
// or
'MY_GLOBAL': `Math.random()`,
}),
Then your output JS will be like this:
window.MyGlobal = 'foo';
// or
window.MyGlobal = Math.random();
But MY_GLOBAL will never actually exist at runtime, because it is never defined. So that's why DefinePlugin has a misleading name.

I solved this issue by setting the global variables as a static properties on the classes to which they are most relevant. In ES5 it looks like this:
var Foo = function(){...};
Foo.globalVar = {};

You may hit this issue, when triing bundle < script > tag js files in some old project.
Do not use webpack for this, it may be even impossible if joining 50+ libraries like jquery and then figuring out all global variables or if they used nested require. I would advice to simply use uglify js instead , which drops all this problems in 2 commands.
npm install uglify-js -g
uglifyjs --compress --mangle --output bundle.js -- js/jquery.js js/silly.js