I am trying to get Swig (the template language) working on Parse Cloud Code with Express. Parse Cloud Code is a Node/Express host that doesn't allow NPM. Ridiculous, I know. I can still load external files into code with requires statements however, so I think that there's hope I can get this working.
So my question is how do I get the whole entire Swig package into a single JS file that I can include from my Parse Express app like so:
var swig = require("./cloud/swig.js");
Worth noting that Parse breaks normal require statements so that the NPM package as-is doesn't work without modifying each and every single file in the node_modules folder to have cloud in its path (which is why my above path has cloud in it). Parse also chokes while uploading lots of small files. Concatenation is a need on this platform.
I have tried playing with browserify for hours, but no combination of anything I do makes exposes the Swig object when I load the browserified file with the require statement. I think it may be the right option since the Browserified file includes all the files from Swig, but it doesn't expose them externally.
My question is either can this be done in browserify, and if so, how? Or is there another way to concatenate a NPM repo down to one file so it can be more easily included from this platform?
Thanks so much.
Browserify is not the right tool for the job.
As the name implies, browserify is intended to be used to generate files you want to execute in the browser. It walks the require calls from an entrypoint (i.e. some JS file you pass to browserify) and bundles them in an object that maps their names to functions wrapping the modules. It does not expect a require function to already exist and doesn't make any use of it. It substitutes its own implementation of require that only does one thing: look up names from the bundle, execute the matching function and return its exports.
You could theoretically require a browserify bundle, but it would just return an empty object (although it might mess with globals). And in all likelihood it might break because the bundled modules think they are being executed in a browser. This won't do any good.
The only sane option if you want to stick with the host, is to copy over the node_modules folder from your local project folder. This may not work if your computer and the server are not 100% compatible (e.g. 32-bit vs 64-bit, Debian vs RedHat, OSX/Windows vs Linux) but this mostly depends on your exact dependencies (basically anything that is built with node-gyp can be a problem).
Node.js uses the node_modules folder when looking up dependencies in require calls automagically. If you can somehow get a node_modules folder with the right contents on the server, require("foo") will work as long as node_modules contains a module foo.
Ultimately, you are trying to use npm modules in Parse Cloud code and currently it's not possible:
https://parse.com/questions/using-npm-modules-in-cloud-code
But if you are only trying to use Swig, then as a work-around, you can consider using underscore template instead. Parse already includes underscore:
https://parse.com/docs/cloud_modules_guide#underscore
Related
Background
I have a django app that I want to create an admin widget for. The widget will display text in a particular way (like a terminal). It's so that app admins can see forwarded logs from an analytics process that is orchestrated by django (the app is django-twined).
To do that I want to use something like terminal-kit or one of the other libraries requiring npm install <whatever>
Building the app
The app is built in docker, and I don't want the entire node stack to end up in my production image.
I could use a multi-stage docker build; so install node and a lib from NPM in the first stage, then copy the library from node_modules in the second stage, but this feels unnecessarily slow.
Also, because all I'm doing then is using the raw js static assets that get bundled with the django app, I'm not sure how to go about importing the module (or if this is even possible).
The questions
Can I install an npm module without having the node stack present, and therefore avoid dealing with unwieldy multi stage builds?
How can I then import or require the contents of that module into vanilla javascript to use in a django widget?
Is this even in general possible? If it looks like moving a mountain, I'll give up and just slap a text area with monospace font on there... but it would be nice if log highlighting and colours were properly handled in a terminal-like way.
Can I install an npm module without having the node stack present, and therefore avoid dealing with unwieldy multi stage builds?
You can rollup an npm package using a dev tool like Browserify.
This can be done by rolling up the entire package using something like:
browserify --require terminal-kit
Browserify will parse the package and create a single JS file that you can try loading in the browser. There are some limitations to this so I'd recommend experimenting and exploring the Browserify docs.
How can I then import or require the contents of that module into vanilla javascript to use in a django widget?
You can do this by including a Django template file reference in the backend admin class definition. In the template you'll need to include an html JS source tag that points to the JS script you want to load. Django can include static files when building, you can use that to include the JS file during build time and then a local resource reference to point the template file to the right location.
Is this even in general possible?
Generally speaking this is definitely possible but YMMV. It boils down to the complexities of the npm package and what exactly it is trying to do in the browser.
In steps I would do the following:
Use Browserify to convert the npm package to a single JS file.
Create an html file that loads the local JS file, open this in the browser.
Open the console and see if the commands/context you're hoping to reproduce are working as expected in the browser. You could also write another vanilla JS file and load that in the html file to test.
Include the JS file reference in the Django admin template/widget.
Write custom JS code in the widget that uses/shows the globally instantiated JS script.
This strategy is based off my personal experience, I have had success following this strategy, hopefully it is helpful.
I have protofiles defined inside a go module and publish this module so servers and go-clients can reference the generated code. Now I also want to have grpc-web client to communicate with the server. grpc-web generates ts and js files, but inorder to use this in browser I need to package this as npm module or copy the generated code into browser repo manually which I do not want to do. What is the standard practice here?
Is there a good solution to package npm & go module from proto files.
Update: I ended up copying over the generated ts/js files into desired location as part of my standard build. Since I have a mono repo this is sufficient right now. Kind of straight forward and also source controlled. Not sure if there is a better idomatic way.
I know how to get the current directory from a Meteor package, but how do I get the path of a specific file in the project?
node's __dirname and __filename don't work in Meteor.
It is complicated.
meteor run copies your project files to a tree of directories inside <project-dir>/.meteor/local/build, reorganizes them in non-obvious ways (e.g.. the private subdirectory in the original tree becomes the assets subdirectory) and mixes it in with various npm modules to create a bundle that can be executed as a nodejs project. Indeed, to avoid duplications, there is a .gitignore file automatically set up in the .meteor directory that tells git, if you use it for version control, not to copy the .meteor/local directory.
The original project directory gets watched in case you change a file. The change then gets copied into the current project build directory and the project rebuilt.
If you deploy to a remote system, the build gets copied to a server and then run.
process is usually a defined global server-side object, and works according to the node.js API, because the meteor server code is ultimately running in node.js.
So you can run console.log(process.cwd()); in your server-side to obtain the current working directory for the server process, usually something like:
~/<meteor project directory>/.meteor/local/build/programs/server
This suggests that when meteor run is done locally, original project files are in ../../../../../, but don't use that as it may change in the future.
Instead, for the directory containing the original project files, you could use:
baseDir = process.cwd().replace(/\/\.meteor.*$/, '');
This will get the working directory, and truncate everything beginning with /.meteor
This won't work for a server deploy, though, because the original project tree is not needed on the server, only the build. Files that aren't intended to be client or server code could possibly be stuck in the private subdir, which as I mentioned becomes the assets subdir in the build. Ways to currently find files in the build is either manual inspection .meteor/local in a local run, or use of a JS library that calls or imitates gnu find.
Since you mentioned packages, I note that in the build, server-side package code finally ends up in:
~/<project-dir>/.meteor/local/build/programs/server/packages
and client side in:
~/<project-dir>/.meteor/local/build/programs/web.browser/packages
I use Visual Studio 2013 and .NET 4.5 for an MVC project.
I've learning to use AngularJS via several videos on Pluralsight and one of them walks through the process of using Grunt to clean the output directory, then use ngmin to min-safe the Javascript files.
My process is using a gruntfile.js to clean and run ngmin against the javascript files in my solution, then put them in a directory called app_built. This is executed via a batch file in the pre-build for the project and then I include it via a ScriptBundle with IncludeDirectory pointing to the app_built directory. My intent is to use the Bundling features of .NET 4.5 to do the rest of the minification and concatenation of the Javascript after all the files have been min-safed via Grunt.
I specify the path to the min-safed files with the following:
bundles.Add(new ScriptBundle("~/bundles/minSafed")
.IncludeDirectory("~/app_built/", "*.js", true));
If I run this on my local machine, it runs fine without a hitch. The Javascript is minified and bundled as I'd expect and the resulting web application runs fine as well.
If I publish the website to a remote server, I get a server error that the "Directory does not exist. Parameter name: directoryVirtualPath". I assume this error is saying that it's unable to find the directory populated with my many *.js files. I also assume this is because they weren't published since they aren't part of the solution, even though the folder they reside in is a part of the solution (it's just empty within the solution explorer in Visual Studio).
If my assumption is correct, what can I do to add these files to my solution so they'll be published with the rest of my web application with minimal effort on my end each time?
And if I'm incorrect in the assumption, what I can I do to resolve this otherwise?
Thanks!
I never did find a great way of going about this. I found information at http://sedodream.com/2010/05/01/WebDeploymentToolMSDeployBuildPackageIncludingExtraFilesOrExcludingSpecificFiles.aspx that seems related, but I was unable to make it work.
Rather, since I knew the name of the outputted file, I simply created such an empty file in my project and referenced that where I needed to. I then had the pre-build task replace the contents of that file with the externally minified version and it would be packaged with the project as necessary, so it works well enough.
I have many JS files. Some of them depend on each other. Many of them depend on jQuery.
I need tool that can accept one file as parameter, fetch all its dependencies transitively and compile them into one file in proper order (based on dependencies)
Dependency information not always available inside files itself, so it would be nice to have it somewhere outside (xml file? folder structure?)
I've heard about Yahoo JS compiler, closure and so on, but I am not sure they do what I need.
Look: I have module "CustomerPage". It sould include "validation.js" and "gui.js". Both require jquery.js. And "gui.js" also requires "myFunctions.js".
I want some ant task or some script that would generate "CustomerPage.js" as result of all that files.
Tool should check dependency order, prevent double including and so on.
My project could have around 500 js files, how could I live with out of this tool?
People says "use GWT", but I need plain JS.
You might want to look at one of the AMD-style module loaders, such as RequireJS. Some of these can do what you want for precompiling, and can run in a development mode which makes it easier to debug by including all the files directly.