EPUB reader written in HTML, CSS and Javascript.
This Readium software component implements the Readium Chrome extension / app for offline reading ( https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/readium/fepbnnnkkadjhjahcafoaglimekefifl ), and the "cloud reader" for online e-books ( http://development.readium.divshot.io or http://readium.divshot.io for stable versions).
Please see https://github.com/readium/readium-shared-js for more information about the underlying rendering engine.
BSD-3-Clause ( http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause )
See license.txt.
- A decent terminal. On Windows, GitShell works great ( http://git-scm.com ), GitBash works too ( https://msysgit.github.io ), and Cygwin adds useful commands ( https://www.cygwin.com ).
- NodeJS ( https://nodejs.org ) v0.12 or higher
git clone --recursive -b BRANCH_NAME https://github.com/readium/readium-js-viewer.git readium-js-viewer
(replace "BRANCH_NAME" with e.g. "develop")cd readium-js-viewer
git submodule update --init --recursive
to ensure that the readium-js-viewer chain of dependencies is initialised (readium-js, readium-shared-js and readium-cfi-js)git checkout BRANCH_NAME && git submodule foreach --recursive "git checkout BRANCH_NAME"
(or simplycd
inside each repository / submodule, and manually enter the desired branch name:git checkout BRANCH_NAME
) Git should automatically track the corresponding branch in the 'origin' remote.
Advanced usage (e.g. TravisCI) - the commands below automate the remote/origin tracking process (this requires a Bash-like shell):
for remote in `git branch -r | grep -v \> | grep -v master`; do git branch --track ${remote#origin/} $remote; done
to ensure that all Git 'origin' remotes are tracked by local branches.git checkout `git for-each-ref --format="%(refname:short) %(objectname)" 'refs/heads/' | grep $(git rev-parse HEAD) | cut -d " " -f 1`
to ensure that Git checks-out actual branch names (as by default Git initializes submodules to match their registered Git SHA1 commit, but in detached HEAD state)
(repeat for each repository / submodule)
npm run prepare
(to perform required preliminary tasks, like patching code before building)
Note that in some cases, administrator rights may be needed in order to install dependencies, because of NPM-related file access permissions (the console log would clearly show the error). Should this be the case, running sudo npm run prepare
usually solves this.
Note that the above command executes the following:
npm install
(to download dependencies defined inpackage.json
... note that the--production
option can be used to avoid downloading development dependencies, for example when testing only the pre-builtbuild-output
folder contents)npm update
(to make sure that the dependency tree is up to date)-
- some additional HTTP requests to the GitHub API in order to check for upstream library updates (wherever Readium uses a forked codebase)
No RequireJS optimization:
npm run http
(to launch an http server. This automatically opens a web browser instance to the HTML files in thedev
folder, chooseindex_RequireJS_no-optimize.html
, or the*LITE.html
variant which do include only the reader view, not the ebook library view)- Hack away! (e.g. source code in the
src/js
folder) - Press F5 (refresh / reload) in the web browser
Or to use optimized Javascript bundles (single or multiple):
npm run build
(to update the RequireJS bundles in the build output folder)npm run http:watch
(to launch an http server. This automatically opens a web browser instance to the HTML files in thedev
folder, chooseindex_RequireJS_single-bundle.html
orindex_RequireJS_multiple-bundles.html
, or the*LITE.html
variants which do include only the reader view, not the ebook library view)npm run http
(same as above, but without watching for file changes (no automatic rebuild))
And finally to update the distribution packages (automatically calls the build
task above, so npm run build
is redundant):
npm run dist
(Chrome extension and cloud reader, including the lite / no-library variant)
The above task takes a lot of time (as it builds distributable packages for all ReadiumJS flavours), and is in fact not strictly necessary to test the cloud reader (see npm run http
above, using the "no optimise" RequireJS option). Thankfully, the packaged code for the Chrome App / Extension can be quickly generated using this build command instead:
npm run chromeApp
(generates a ready-to-use Readium packaged app for Chrome, inside the usualdist/chrome-app
folder)
Remember to activate "developer mode" in the Chrome web browser, so that the Readium packaged app / extension can be added directly from the dist/chrome-app
folder. Subsequently (after each build), the app can simply be reloaded.
Also note that the built-in local HTTP server functionality (npm run http
) is primarily designed to serve the Readium application at development time in its "exploded" form (dev
, src
, node_modules
, etc. folders). However, it is also possible to use any arbitrary HTTP server as long as the root folder is readium-js-viewer
(so that the application assets ; CSS, images, fonts ; can be loaded relative to this base URL). Example with the built-in NodeJS server: node node_modules/http-server/bin/http-server -a 127.0.0.1 -p 8080 -c-1 .
Remark: a log of HTTP requests is preserved in http_app-ebooks.log
. This file contains ANSI color escape codes, so although it can be read using a regular text editor, it can be rendered in its original format using the shell command: cat http_app.log
(on OSX / Linux), or sed "s,x,x,g" http_app-ebooks.log
(on Windows).
By default, a single HTTP server is launched when using the npm run http
task, or its "watch" and "nowatch" variants (usage described in the above "Typical workflow" section).
To launch separate local HTTP servers on two different domains (in order to test HTTP CORS cross-origin app vs. ebooks deployment architecture), simply invoke the equivalent tasks named with http2
instead of http
. For example: npm run http2
. More information about real-world HTTP CORS is given in the "Cloud reader deployment" section below.
Remark: logs of HTTP requests are preserved in two separate files http_app.log
and http_ebooks.log
. They contains ANSI color escape codes, so although they can be read using a regular text editor, they can be rendered in their original format using the shell command: cat http_app.log
(on OSX / Linux), or sed "s,x,x,g" http_app.log
(on Windows).
Assuming a fork of https://github.com/readium/readium-js-viewer
is made under USER
at https://github.com/USER/readium-js-viewer
, the .gitmodules
file ( https://github.com/readium/readium-js-viewer/blob/develop/.gitmodules ) will still point to the original submodule URL (at readium
, instead of USER
). Thankfully, one can simply modify the .gitmodules
file by replacing https://github.com/readium/
with https://github.com/USER/
, and do this for every submodule (readium-js-viewer
> readium-js
> readium-shared-js
> readium-cfi-js
). Then the Git command git submodule sync
can be invoked, for each submodule.
When invoking the npm run build
command, the generated build-output
folder contains RequireJS module bundles that include the default plugins specified in readium-js/readium-js-shared/plugins/plugins.cson
(see the plugins documentation https://github.com/readium/readium-shared-js/blob/develop/PLUGINS.md ). Developers can override the default plugins configuration by using an additional file called plugins-override.cson
. This file is git-ignored (not persistent in the Git repository), which means that Readium's default plugins configuration is never at risk of being mistakenly overridden by developers, whilst giving developers the possibility of creating custom builds on their local machines.
For example, the annotations
plugin can be activated by adding it to the include
section in readium-js/readium-js-shared/plugins/plugins-override.cson
.
Then, in order to create / remove highlighted selections, simply comment display:none
for .icon-annotations
in the src/css/viewer.css
file (this will enable an additional toolbar button).
Note that by default, compiled RequireJS bundles are minified / mangled / uglify-ed. You can force the build process to generate non-compressed Javascript bundles by setting the RJS_UGLY
environment variable to "no" or "false" (any other value means "yes" / "true").
This may come-in handy when testing / debugging the Chrome Extension (Packaged App) in "developer mode" directly from the dist
folder (i.e. without the sourcemaps manually copied into the script folder).
Mocha-driven UI tests via Selenium (not PhantomJS, but actual installed browsers accessed via WebDriver):
npm run test:firefox
npm run test:chrome
npm run test:chromeApp
npm run test
(runs all of the above)
Via SauceLabs:
npm run test:sauce:firefox
npm run test:sauce:chrome
npm run test:sauce:chromeApp
npm run test:sauce
(runs all of the above)
Travis (Continuous Integration) automatically uses a chromeApp and Firefox test matrix (2x modes), and uses SauceLabs to actually run the test. See https://travis-ci.org/readium/readium-js-viewer/
See the dist
folder contents (generated by npm run dist
):
cloud-reader
cloud-reader-lite
(same as above, without the ebook library feature)chrome-app
(Google Chrome Extension / Packaged App)
The source maps are generated separately, so they are effectively an opt-in feature (simply copy/paste them next to their original Javascript file counterparts, e.g. in the scripts
folder)
Note that npm run http
+ dev
folder is not the only way to test Readium "locally". The distributable / packaged Readium app in the dist
folder can also execute in any arbitrary local HTTP server, such as the built-in NodeJS option node node_modules/http-server/bin/http-server -a 127.0.0.1 -p 8080 -c-1 ..
(assuming the current command line folder is readium-js-viewer
). Then, simply open the http://127.0.0.1:8080/readium-js-viewer/dist/cloud-reader/index.html?epubs=http://127.0.0.1:8080/readium-js-viewer/epub_content/epub_library.json
URL, which explicitely specifies the location of the ebook library (alternatively, you may copy/paste the epub_content
folder manually under dist/cloud-reader
, and open http://127.0.0.1:8080/readium-js-viewer/dist/cloud-reader/index.html
without parameters).
The cloud-reader
distribution folder (see section above) can be uploaded to an HTTP server as-is,
in which case a sibling /epub_content/
folder is expected to contain exploded or zipped EPUBs,
and the /epub_content/epub_library.json
file is expected to describe the available ebooks in the online library
(see the existing examples in readium-js-viewer
repository). Additionally, the epubs
URL parameter (HTTP GET)
can be used to specify a different location for the JSON file that describes the ebook library contents, for example:
http://domain.com/index.html?epubs=http://otherdomain.com/ebooks.json
(assuming both HTTP servers are suitably configured with CORS),
or for example http://domain.com/index.html?epubs=EPUBs/ebooks.json
(assuming a folder named EPUBs/
exists as a sibling of index.html
,
and this folder contains the ebooks.json
file). Finally, the ebook library can be permanently set to a specific location,
by editing cloud-reader/index.html
and by replacing the value of epubLibraryPath
:
require.config({
config : {
'readium_js_viewer/ModuleConfig' : {
'epubLibraryPath': VALUE
}
});
The cloud-reader-lite
distribution does not feature an ebook library, so EPUBs must be specified via the URL parameter (HTTP GET), for example:
http://domain.com/index.html?epub=http://otherdomain.com/ebook.epub
(assuming both HTTP servers are suitably configured with CORS),
or for example http://domain.com/index.html?epub=EPUBs/ebook.epub
(assuming a folder named EPUBs/
exists as a sibling of index.html
,
and this folder contains the ebook.epub
file
(note that the folder name is arbitrary, and it may in fact follow the default naming convention: epub_content/
)).
Example of Readium app hosted at Surge.sh, and EPUBs hosted at DivShot.io: http://readium.surge.sh/?epubs=http://development.readium.divshot.io/epub_content/epub_library.json (note that only DivShot.io specifies HTTP CORS headers, the Surge.sh server does not configure anything special to achieve this unilateral cross-origin resource sharing)
For more information about HTTP CORS, see https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RK_59-75OSE0PA6wexD9rYHQLnNYfoKIpsnH3SmDpUc
NOTE THAT THIS FEATURE IS NOT FULLY IMPLEMENTED YET (PLEASE REFERENCE THE GITHUB REPOSITORIES INSTEAD FROM YOUR PACKAGE.JSON)
All packages "owned" and maintained by the Readium Foundation are listed here: https://www.npmjs.com/~readium
Note that although Node and NPM natively use the CommonJS format, Readium modules are currently only defined as AMD (RequireJS). This explains why Browserify ( http://browserify.org ) is not used by this Readium project. More information at http://requirejs.org/docs/commonjs.html and http://requirejs.org/docs/node.html
- Make sure
npm install readium-js-viewer
completes successfully ( https://www.npmjs.com/package/readium-js-viewer ) - Execute
npm run http
, which opens a web browser to a basic RequireJS bootstrapper located in thedev
folder (this is not a production-ready minified application)
Note: the --dev
option after npm install readium-js-viewer
can be used to force the download of development dependencies,
but this is kind of pointless as the code source and RequireJS build configuration files are missing.
See below if you need to hack the code.
The build-output
directory contains two distinct folders:
The _single-bundle
folder contains readium-js-viewer_all.js
(and its associated source-map file, as well as a RequireJS bundle index file (which isn't actually needed at runtime, so here just as a reference)),
which aggregates all the required code (external library dependencies included, such as Underscore, jQuery, etc.),
as well as the "Almond" lightweight AMD loader ( https://github.com/jrburke/almond ).
This means that the full RequireJS library ( http://requirejs.org ) is not actually needed to bootstrap the AMD modules at runtime,
as demonstrated by the HTML file in the dev
folder (trimmed for brevity):
<html>
<head>
<!-- main code bundle, which includes its own Almond AMD loader (no need for the full RequireJS library) -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="../build-output/_single-bundle/readium-js-viewer_all.js"> </script>
<!-- index.js calls into the above library -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="./index.js"> </script>
</head>
<body>
<div id="viewport"> </div>
</body>
</html>
The _multiple-bundles
folder contains several Javascript bundles (and their respective source-map files, as well as RequireJS bundle index files):
readium-external-libs.js
: aggregated library dependencies (e.g. Underscore, jQuery, etc.)readium-shared-js.js
: shared Readium code (basically, equivalent to thejs
folder of the "readium-shared-js" submodule)readium-js.js
: the core Readium code (basically, equivalent to thejs
folder of the "readium-js" submodule)readium-js-viewer.js
: this Readium code (mainly, the contents of thejs
folder)readium-plugin-example.js
: simple plugin demoreadium-plugin-annotations.js
: the annotation plugin (DOM selection + highlight), which bundle actually contains the "Backbone" library, as this dependency is not already included in the "external libs" bundle. )
In addition, the folder contains the full RequireJS.js
library ( http://requirejs.org ), as the above bundles do no include the lightweight "Almond" AMD loader ( https://github.com/jrburke/almond ).
Usage is demonstrated by the HTML file in the dev
folder (trimmed for brevity):
<html>
<head>
<!-- full RequireJS library -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="../build-output/_multiple-bundles/RequireJS.js"> </script>
<!-- individual bundles: -->
<!-- readium CFI library -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="../build-output/_multiple-bundles/readium-cfi-js.js"> </script>
<!-- external libraries -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="../build-output/_multiple-bundles/readium-external-libs.js"> </script>
<!-- readium itself -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="../build-output/_multiple-bundles/readium-shared-js.js"> </script>
<!-- simple example plugin -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="../build-output/_multiple-bundles/readium-plugin-example.js"> </script>
<!-- annotations plugin -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="../build-output/_multiple-bundles/readium-plugin-annotations.js"> </script>
<!-- readium js -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="../build-output/_multiple-bundles/readium-js.js"> </script>
<!-- readium js viewer -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="../build-output/_multiple-bundles/readium-js-viewer.js"> </script>
<!-- index.js calls into the above libraries -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="./index.js"> </script>
</head>
<body>
<div id="viewport"> </div>
</body>
</html>
Note how the "external libs" set of AMD modules can be explicitly described using the bundles
RequireJS configuration directive
(this eliminates the apparent opacity of such as large container of library dependencies):
<script type="text/javascript">
requirejs.config({
baseUrl: '../build-output/_multiple-bundles'
});
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../build-output/_multiple-bundles/readium-cfi-js.js.bundles.js"> </script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../build-output/_multiple-bundles/readium-external-libs.js.bundles.js"> </script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../build-output/_multiple-bundles/readium-shared-js.js.bundles.js"> </script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../build-output/_multiple-bundles/readium-plugin-example.js.bundles.js"> </script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../build-output/_multiple-bundles/readium-plugin-annotations.js.bundles.js"> </script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../build-output/_multiple-bundles/readium-js.js.bundles.js"> </script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../build-output/_multiple-bundles/readium-js-viewer.js.bundles.js"> </script>
CSON = CoffeeScript-Object-Notation ( https://github.com/bevry/cson )
Running the command npm run cson2json
will re-generate the package.json
JSON file.
For more information, see comments in the master ./package/package_base.cson
CSON file.
Why CSON? Because it is a lot more readable than JSON, and therefore easier to maintain. The syntax is not only less verbose (separators, etc.), more importantly it allows comments and line breaking!
Although these benefits are not so critical for basic "package" definitions,
here package.cson/json
declares relatively intricate script
tasks that are used in the development workflow.
npm run SCRIPT_NAME
offers a lightweight technique to handle most build tasks,
as NPM CLI utilities are available to perform cross-platform operations (agnostic to the actual command line interface / shell).
For more complex build processes, Grunt / Gulp can be used, but these build systems do not necessarily offer the most readable / maintainable options.
Downside: DO NOT invoke npm init
or npm install --save
--save-dev
--save-optional
,
as this would overwrite / update the JSON, not the master CSON!