Node/NPM newbie with a front-end dev question. I understand one of the strengths of an NPM-type module is that its dependencies get installed within itself, in node_modules. Modules always have the code that they need, and outside libs don't conflict.
That said, seems like this would result in the client downloading the same lib+ver (say, jquery v.X) multiple times. What's the technique for specifying that a module needs a dependency but that it shouldn't package that code if the dependency is already available on the site/page? Does said technique involve parent modules that make the shared lib+ver available?
Or, should various front-end modules just re-download the same lib+ver that other modules on the page might have already downloaded?
The client will only grab files from that folder that are needed, so if it's linked in HTML once the client will only grab it once. NPM handles dependency duplicates automatically.
Having said that, normally you will want to only serve a static folder to the client without revealing your entire server structure. This can be achieved using:
app.use(express.static('server/public')
where 'server/public' is the directory relative to the server.js file that you want to serve. In this case, 'public' contains all my linked view files, stylesheets, JS files, etc. that are linked from the HTML pages. You don't need to move that module's dependencies there as well.
The downside to this is that you'd have to manually move dependencies into the public folder (I make a 'vendor' directory usually) and link from there. It's more work but it's much more efficient and safer in the long run.
NOTE: when using a static folder to serve files, your HTML links will be served from a relative path to that folder.
Related
I am wondering what is the best way to keep archives/older versions of a specific module I am developing for nodeJS.
Say I have SampleModule v1.0.5 then later on I will be releasing SampleModule v2.0.0. I want to retain both versions in my node_modules folder since another app will only need SampleModule v1.0.5.
What is the best way to do this? Should I just have 2 diff folders: samplemodule105 and samplemodule200 then call something like require('samplemodule200') or require('samplemodule105')?
Also, so basically require() checks the folder name rather than the name and version inside a module's package.json right? This folder and name are only used to fetch the library via npm install?
I have been setting up my development environment for my Laravel/AngularJS project. My IDE is JetBrains PhpStorm. I am wondering what are the best practices for configuring the IDE to deal with the node_modules (or bower_components or vendor for my PHP) folder, so that:
It is not included in the code inspection as far as the modules' internal code is concerned.
It is included in the code inspection as far as references in my own code to the modules is concerned.
It is included in Autocomplete or Code Navigation (Ctrl+click on methods)
To make it more clear: I want to be able to Ctrl+click on methods of my node modules and be redirected to the source code of these modules. I also want to be warned if I write a node module method wrong, or if it does not exist. Also autocomplete a method, when I press Ctrl+Space. But I don't want the internal code of my node modules to be included in code inspection, because it takes a lot of time to inspect all the modules, and they are supposed to be ok, so I don't need to inspect them.
I already tried two solutions:
Marking the folders as excluded: This does not work because the folders are totally excluded from the project and redirection and inspection does not work at all
Creating a specific Scope (in PhpStorm Settings), that includes all files except the node_modules folder, to use when I manually run Code Inspection: It is impossible to exclude the node_modules folder, because my IDE recognizes it as a module "I think" (it has [webapp] next to it in the Project explorer). I could however exclude bower_components and vendor.
Regardless my tries, what is the best way to deal with it?
As it's mentioned in help, PhpStorm auto-excludes node_modules folder from indexing for better performance, adding the direct dependencies listed in package.json to javascript libraries for completion, etc. So the best way to handle node_modules is relying on the IDE default procedures
I'm a beginner using NodeJS. I'm using a plugin for video-js called videojs-playlist. The docs say to include it like this:
<script src="path/to/video.js/dist/video.js"></script>
<script src="path/to/videojs-playlist/dist/videojs-playlist.js"></script>
What exactly is the path/to supposed to be if not root/node_modules or something like that? How am I supposed to access those files from an ejs view? I have installed both video-js and videojs-playlist using npm.
Right now I get redirect errors on my page because it's not finding the file from the paths I've tried.
If the path doesn't have a / at the beginning, then the path is relative to the file the <script> tag is in; otherwise, it is relative to the site root -- which may mean different things depending on if/how you are bundling/deploying your javascript.
For a simple case, if you have the script tags in an index.html, and you copied video.js to the same directory as index.html, you would reference by:
<script src="video.js">
If you are using Node to test things out on your personal machine, you could reference a file relative to your HTML file and node_modules directory; however, this wouldn't really be the best in the context of deploying and managing a real application.
Node gives you require() to import modules from dependencies you've installed without needing to specify their exact location and directory structure, but it looks like this particular plugin may not have given you that convenience here.
It looks like you are in need of a bundler. One widely-used and well-documented bundler is webpack, but there are others such as parcel and FuseBox. These can all serve your needs.
These tools are most likely what the videojs-playlist README on GitHub is referring to when they say:
Include videojs-playlist on your website using the tool(s) of your choice.
Among other features, these tools can take a file from one of your node_modules dependencies, and "bundle" relative your javascript application (however you desire), so that you don't have to carry around some pre-installed giant node_modules directory everywhere with you -- you only take what you need with you and structure it the way you want.
I use npm as a package manager for my web frontend projects. I have a need to generate some fake data locally within JavaScript in a project. Faker.js seems to be the perfect library to do so.
Most libraries, when I install them with npm, either have usable js files at the root of the installed files or provide a dist or similar folder with the .js files that I can reference, e.g. <script src="node_modules/angular/angular.min.js"></script> Faker.js however does not include this.
The documentation for faker simply includes this line: <script src = "faker.js" type = "text/javascript"></script> Clearly this will not work since the package doesn't even install a file called faker.js anywhere. My assumption is that you're expected to either use it with Node.js (non web frontend) projects or you're expected to build it somehow to get the faker.js file.
One tutorial I found online says you can npm install faker and then use <script src="node_modules/faker/build/build/faker.js">. But I also do not have a build folder. The tutorial didn't give any instructions on building the faker.js file.
Can someone shed some light on how this works? I have actually seen at least one other package (jQuery) that is similar and does not include a compiled usable browser version in the distribution. In past projects I've simply downloaded a compiled .js file and included it in my source control, but I'd like to try to avoid that if at all possible!
(Please don't answer with "just use a CDN" - I am working in an environment with specific policy requirements that HTML on the production server may not directly reference any off-site assets or scripts, but it is OK to pull in those libraries and self-host them. Frustrating, yes, but I don't get to make the rules.)
so far i've learned a bit about NodeJS. But now i want to write a huge enterprise app with it and i'm wondering how to setup the structure correctly? Coming from other languages like PHP and Java, i imagine, i would split my project in different NPM modules. For example #mybigproject/customer, #mybigproject/cart and #mybigproject/checkout and so on.
But those submodules would be installed in the node_modules folder of the application skeleton. How would i tell for example Express, that the template files are in the different module directories? Or for example i use TypeORM for data access. So each module would have it's own set of models. How do those models know the database configuration data, as it's only in the main application skeleton, or the other way around, how does the application skeleton should know where to find the models?
Don't use npm modules for different parts of your project.
This components is integral part of your project and usually depend on your global config / schema / routing / etc
Just put it in different files and require it where you need it.
You can get an idea for folders structure from projects like Sail.JS
Use npm modules if you writing some utility that going to serve you for different apps and you want an easy way to upgrade the utility code once for all your apps (or in case you want to share that utility as open source for all of us)
NPM can install your local folder as a dependency. (ref)
npm install <folder>:
Install the package in the directory as a symlink in the current
project. Its dependencies will be installed before it's linked. If
sits inside the root of your project, its dependencies may be
hoisted to the toplevel node_modules as they would for other types of
dependencies.
Your module keeps its original location after installed and a symlink is created as the same name of your module folder in the top level node_modules folder.
In these custom sub-modules, you can use __dirname and relative paths to locate you configuration files to feed to database or other data consumers.
But remember that, sub-modules often serve as utility functions for the main module. They should be independent from the project context.