How to use npm module in Meteor client? - node.js

I'm thoroughly confused on how to use an npm module in Meteor client code.
I understand modules like fs would only work server-side, but in this case I'd like to use a simple text module like this for displaying pretty dates:
https://github.com/ecto/node-timeago
I've tried installing the module under /public/node_modules,
and it works great on the server-side following these instructions from SO: (
How do we or can we use node modules via npm with Meteor?)
Meteor.startup(function () {
var require = __meteor_bootstrap__.require
var timeago = require('timeago')
console.log(timeago(new Date()))
...
However it doesn't work in the client-side code:
if (Meteor.is_client) {
var require = __meteor_bootstrap__.require
var timeago = require('timeago')
console.log(timeago(new Date()))
...
Uncaught ReferenceError: __meteor_bootstrap__ is not defined"
Server-side is sort of useless for me in this case, as I'm trying to render text on the client.

I don't believe you need to use the server side version. Use the npm stuff for server side only and btw, put it in your /public/ as well. Who knows maybe you can call it once it is in your /public/, try it. Or try this.
Use something like the jquery timeago.js
Put it in /client/ or something like /client/js
Create a /client/helpers.js or some such.
Use a handlebars helper.
Handlebars.registerHelper('date', function(date) {
if(date) {
dateObj = new Date(date);
return $.timeago(dateObj);
}
return 'a long long time ago in a galaxy far away';
});
Example of calling 'date' handlebars helper function from template.
{{ date created }}
Where date is the handebars helper and created is the date coming out of the meteor/mongo collection.
See the github Britto project. That is where I got this code snippet and used it in a chat room app I wrote. Works fine.
There are a couple of others floating out there. Go to madewith.meteor.com and peruse the source of some of the projects.

Related

How can I use .vue files in Node.js *without* a bundler like webpack?

I'm trying to find a simple server-side rendering solution for Vue.js, but every example or tutorial I've found has dependencies I don't want to include that overcomplicate things: usually webpack, Vue Router, and Vuex.
I'm looking for a solution that runs in Node.js and can render a .vue file to a string, including any other .vue files it may reference.
const sfcContent = fs.readFileSync("./app.vue", "utf-8");
const props = {
foo: "bar",
};
const htmlString = await render(sfcContent, props);
console.log(htmlString);
async function render(sfcContent, props) {
// this is the function I'm looking for
}
http-vue-loader looks promising, as it does roughly what I'm looking for except in the browser instead of Node.js.
Any ideas what I should try?
You could look into the compiler-utils package https://github.com/vuejs/component-compiler-utils
Although, this will still require some tinkering on your end so I'm not sure if it'll be the way to go if you don't want to overcomplicate things.

Webpack Aliases in Node JS Server code

I'm building an isomorphic React/React-Router/Redux/Webpack application and I'm attempting to implement server side rendering.
My directory looks like:
/client
/actions
/components
/containers
/server
/server.js
In my webpack config, I have aliases set up for all the folders inside client:
var path_base = path.resolve(__dirname, '..');
const resolve = path.resolve;
const base = function() {
var args = [path_base];
args.push.apply(args, arguments);
return resolve.apply(resolve,args);
};
const resolve_alias = base.bind(null, 'src/client');
const aliases = [
'actions',
'components',
'constants',
'containers',
'middleware',
'reducers',
'routes',
'store',
'styles',
'utils',
'validation'
];
so that inside the code that gets bundled by webpack, I can do:
import { Widget } from 'components';
and that import gets resolved by webpack.
Now in my server code, in order to do the rendering, I have to import some of my client files, like routes/index.js. The problem I'm running into when I import my routes file, it's using a webpack alias to another file, say components or containers so naturally, the node js require system can't resolve it.
How do I fix something like that? I looked at this question and it talks about essentially setting up the same aliases that exist in webpack with mock-require. But then the issue becomes that my routes file imports all my components which then all import things like stylesheets, images, etc. Should I then be using something like webpack-isomorphic-tools?
The guides I've been looking at (this for example) are all great at showing how server side rendering is accomplished but none of them really talk about how to resolve all the requires and whatnot.
After battling with this issue for 2 days I settled on babel-plugin-webpack-alias.
What you need to do to resolve paths with that is:
$ npm install --save-dev babel-plugin-webpack-alias
Add the plugin to your .babelrc
Add the aliases to your webpack.config (make sure you use path.join())
Refer to this post if you have problems loading styles
The other option I tried was universal-webpack but I found it to be a bit verbose. If you want to see roughly how the whole server-side loading works, you can check out this video.
If you really want them, run your server side code through babel and use this plugin: https://www.npmjs.com/package/babel-plugin-module-alias which will let you do the same thing as webpack.
Edit: This one works a lot better: https://github.com/jagrem/babel-resolve-relative-module it allows multiple paths
Try to use NODE_PATH. Node will always look for a module in this path during require calls. It allows to short cut your relative paths as you want.
// turn this
import {Widget} from '../../components';
// into this
import {Widget} from 'components';
See Node.js docs for more information.
P.S. this thing is very sensitive, so use it carefully. Now your code tightly depends from the environment and may break somewhere.
If you use webpack-isomorphic-tools then it'll take your webpack config into account for your server side which will make all your aliases work.
https://www.npmjs.com/package/webpack-isomorphic-tools

Routing in locomotive using ejs

I'm trying out node and some frameworks for node atm, specifically locomotive. However, i seem to be stuck on routing using locomotive. A couple questions i can't find the answer to, so here goes:
why does the locomotive out-of-box install use index.html.ejs as a
filename? Why not just index.ejs? What's the benefit?
i'm trying to add a route to a view: searchName.html.ejs which i
added in the views folder. To achieve this i made a toolController
like this:
var locomotive = require('locomotive').Controller,
toolController = new Controller();
toolController.searchName = function() {
this.render();
}
module.exports = toolController;
I also added a route in routes.js like so:
this.match('searchName', 'tool#searchName');
However, that doesn't work (and yet it's what the documentation says ought to work). The result is a 404 error. So how do i make that route work?
Suppose i want to make a route to eg, anExample.html? How do i go
about that? I notice that in the out-of-the-box app from
locomotive, you cannot enter localhost:3000/index.html . Nor even
localhost:3000/index This seems highly impractical to me, as there
are plenty of users who'll add the specific page they want to go to.
So how can i make that work?
PS: I went through all questions regarding this on stackoverflow and searched the web, but i still can't figure this out.enter code here
The benefit is that this naming scheme allows you to specify several different formats for a single route. So you could have search_name.html.ejs and search_name.xml.ejs, then respond with either view depending on what your client is expecting.
There are a couple issues with the example code you posted. You should be seeing a more descriptive error than a 404, so I'm not sure what's happening there, but here are the fixes to your code that work in my environment.
In the controller:
//tool_controller.js
var locomotive = require('locomotive');
var toolController = new locomotive.Controller();
toolController.searchName = function() {
this.render();
};
module.exports = toolController;
In routes.js:
//routes.js
module.exports = function routes()
{
this.match('searchName', 'tool#searchName');
}
Then, you'll need to change the view to this: views/tool/search_name.html.ejs. It's not clear from the documentation, but locomotive automatically lowercases and underscores actions that are camel-cased, like searchName.
Now start the app and browse to http://localhost:3000/searchName
If you just want to serve a static html file, the easiest way is to just drop it in the public folder. This folder is specifically for serving up static content like client-side js, css, etc. And it works just fine for serving static HTML as well.

using streamlinejs with nodejs express framework

I am new to the 'nodejs' world.So wanting to explore the various technologies,frameworks involved i am building a simple user posts system(users posting something everybody else seeing the posts) backed by redis.I am using express framework which is recommended by most tutorials.But i have some difficulty in gettting data from the redis server i need to do 3 queries from the redis server to display the posts.In which case have to use neested callback after each redis call.So i wanted to use streamline.js to simplify the callbacks.But i am unable to get it to work even after i used npm install streamline -g and require('streamline').register(); before calling
var keys=['comments','timestamp','id'];
var posts=[];
for(var key in keys){
var post=client.sort("posts",'by','nosort',"get","POST:*->"+keys[key],_);
posts.push(post);
}
i get the error ReferenceError: _ is not defined.
Please point me in the right direction or point to any resources i might have missed.
The require('streamline').register() call should be in the file that starts your application (with a .js extension). The streamline code should be in another file with a ._js extension, which is required by the main script.
Streamline only allows you to have async calls (calls with _ argument) at the top level in a main script. Here, your streamline code is in a module required by the main script. So you need to put it inside a function. Something like:
exports.myFunction = function(_) {
var keys=['comments','timestamp','id'];
var posts=[];
for(var key in keys){
var post=client.sort("posts",'by','nosort',"get","POST:*->"+keys[key],_);
posts.push(post);
}
}
This is because require is synchronous. So you cannot put asynchronous code at the top level of a script which is required by another script.

Get return value of `include` in jade template

What I basically try to accomplish is to re-use jade partials/templates when getting data through a socket connection. Non working example:
socket.on('company_created', function(company) {
var html = include _company;
$('#companies ul').append(html);
});
Normally I had to create a new li and set the content like so (which is working as expected):
$('#companies ul').append($('<li>').text(company.name));
This is okay for a simple list, but if I had complexer list and stuff, this could get messy pretty quick, plus I had to write plain HTML again, so I figured re-using my already existing jade templates with all their goodness would be awesome, but had not luck, yet.
Any clue?
PS: Please do not tell my to use Ember, Backbone, Derby, Meteor, Angular or whatsoever.
Thanks in advance!
You can compile your jade sources to JS with jade.compile. Then include these sources in the client-side javascript, include jade's runtime.min.js, and refer to your jade templates as to normal JS functions in your client-side code.
For example,
server.js
app.get('/templates/:template.js', function (req, res) {
var template = req.params.template;
response.end([
"window.templates = window.templates || {};",
"window.templates[\"" + template + "\"] = " + jade.compile(template + ".jade", { client: true; });
].join("\r\n"));
});
client.js
$(function() { $("#placeholder").html(window.templates["content"]({user: "Daniel" })); });
content.jade
h1: Hello #{user}!
index.jade
!!!
html
head
script(src='/lib/jquery/jquery.js')
script(src='/lib/jade/runtime.min.js')
script(src='/templates/content.js')
script(src='/scripts/client.js')
body
#placeholder
Note that the code above might be syntactically incorrect and is provided solely to illustrate the idea.
we have a build step that compiles them to functions sort of like penartur mentioned. I dont use extend or include (which dont work on the client anyway ATM), but personally I find we have absolutely no need for that on the client at all since the DOM provides all the separation we need.

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