Rejoice: (WORK IN PROGRESS) CommonJS module (re-)loader for the browser

Rejoice is a no-fuss CommonJS loader for the browser, built around two core assumptions:

1. CommonJS modules are for development only — combine all scripts into a single file for production use.

2. Full page reloads suck, JavaScript should be reloaded live.

Rejoice thus provides two separate components:

• Rejoice Loader is used for development and loads the modules using debugger-friendly separate SCRIPT tags.

• Rejoice Bundler combines all modules into a single file for further minification.

Work in progress

Right now, Rejoice can only load modules, only in WebKit browsers, and requires jQuery to be available.

Loader

Rejoice loads unwrapped CommonJS modules (the same modules that node.js uses), like this one:

var foo = require('./foo');
var bar = require('./bar');

exports.usefulFunc = function(a, b) {
  foo.doSometing(a);
  return bar.doSomethingElse(b);
};

A set of top-level scripts to load and the root directory for all JavaScripts is specified inside the SCRIPT tag that loads Rejoice:

<script data-path="." data-main="demo.js,another.js" src="../lib/rejoice.js"></script>

Reloader

When used with LiveReload, Rejoice will soon automatically reload JavaScript modules and other modules that depend on them. Sensible reloading will require some help from the module author.

Bundler

To bundle your dependencies into a single file, run:

bin/rejoice output.js some/input.js another/input.js

The resulting output.js does not have any dependencies, i.e. it can (and should) be used without Rejoice Loader. (Also, unlike the current loader, it does not depend on jQuery.)

License & Copyright

This software is distributed under the MIT license.

© 2010, Andrey Tarantsov andreyvit@gmail.com