RequireJS Support

Note

experimental

It is possible to use the generator to build a RequireJS compatible library using qooxdoo. Here is the description of RequireJS taken from the project's website:

"RequireJS is a JavaScript file and module loader. It is optimized for in-browser use, but it can be used in other JavaScript environments, like Rhino and Node. Using a modular script loader like RequireJS will improve the speed and quality of your code."

—http://requirejs.org/

A couple of steps are necessary to accomplish this:

• You need a class which represents the common interface you want to offer as a require.js module
• and a customized generator config file to build your library.

Representable interface

Let's assume you've implemented a class like the following:

qx.Bootstrap.define("my.super.Dog", {
  extend : Object,
  members : {
    bark : function() {
      alert("BARK!");
    }
  }
});

You want to export this class as a module usable with RequireJS. Usage could look something like this:

require("dog.js", function(dog) {
  dog.bark();
});

That's all you need to take care of on the JavaScript side.

Config file

There is some more work to be done on the config side (this might change at some point). Here is a sample config:

{
  "let" :
  {
    "APPLICATION"  : "library",
    "QOOXDOO_PATH" : "../..",
  },

    "build" :
    {
      "library" : [{
        "manifest" : "${QOOXDOO_PATH}/framework/Manifest.json"
      }],

      "include" : [
        "my.super.Dog"
      ],

      "environment" : {
        "qx.export" : {"dog" : "my.super.Dog"}
      },

      "compile-options" :
      {
        "paths" :
        {
          "file" : "dog.js",
          "app-root" : ".",
          "loader-template" : "${QOOXDOO_PATH}/tool/data/generator/require.loader.tmpl.js"
        },
        "uris" :
        {
          "script"   : ".",
          "resource" : "."
        },
        "code" :
        {
          "format"   : true,
          "optimize" : [ "variants", "base", "string", "privates", "variables" ],
          "except"   : []
        }
      },

      "compile" : { "type" : "build" }
    }
  }
}

We won't go much into detail here because most of this is covered by the Generator Config Keys page and others. But there are two things you should be aware of. First, a new loader template is set for the compile step. There's a special loader template for RequireJS which uses the other important thing: The qx.export environment key. It holds a map specifying which class should be exported as a module. Running the build job will then generate a RequireJS-compatible file named dog.js which exposes the dog class as a module.