grunt-requirejs-auto-bundles

Automated shared bundles for grunt-contrib-requirejs.

This task automatically updates and optimizes your modules: config for RequireJS optimizer builds.

This means you can create projects that have multiple "main" or "entry" modules, but also easily have all common modules placed into bundles to reduce total download for your users.

This leaves you the freedom to focus on setting your module dependencies accurately, instead of optimally for your builds.

Getting Started

This plugin requires Grunt ~0.4.5

If you haven't used Grunt before, be sure to check out the Getting Started guide, as it explains how to create a Gruntfile as well as install and use Grunt plugins. Once you're familiar with that process, you may install this plugin with this command:

npm install grunt-requirejs-auto-bundles --save-dev

Once the plugin has been installed, it may be enabled inside your Gruntfile with this line of JavaScript:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-requirejs-auto-bundles');

The "autobundles" task

Overview

This task reads your requirejs.config() and your grunt-contrib-requirejs build config, figures out the contents of the shared bundles, then updates your modules: config for your requirejs task (it won't produce the final build).

Therefore, it is advised to begin with grunt-contrib-requirejs and get that working with the dir: and modules: options for its requirejs task.

Then, in your project's Gruntfile, add a section named autobundles to the data object passed into grunt.initConfig().

grunt.initConfig({
  autobundles: {
    your_target: {
      maxBundles: 3,
      requireConfigModule: 'require-config'
    },
  },
  requirejs: {
    your_target: {
      // Your `requirejs` config goes here, at a minimum you must have:
      appDir: 'path/to/app',
      baseUrl: './',
      dir: 'path/to/build',
      modules: [
        { name: 'require-config' },
        { name: 'main-a' },
        { name: 'main-b' }
      ]
    }
  }
});

Then, you should configure your build task to first run autobundles before requirejs:

grunt.registerTask('build', ['autobundles', 'requirejs']);

Options

options.maxBundles

Type: Number Default value: 3

The maximum number of bundles that any main module should have to fetch. A smaller number will mean fewer HTTP requests, but larger total download size due to bundling uncommon modules. You may want to test different values to find the right balance for your project.

options.requireConfigModule

Type: String Default value: 'require-config'

The module ID for the JS file that calls requirejs.config({ ... }). This should match an entry in the modules: task config for requirejs.

Usage Examples

In addition to the example task configuration above, you're expected to setup your project like so:

Contents of require-config.js:

requirejs.config({
    // Your RequireJS loader config goes here.
});

In your HTML, you'll need to load your require-config.js first, then your "main" module.

When in development, you'll want to do something like this:

<script src="/src/require.js"></script>
<script>
    require.config({
        baseUrl: '/src'
    });
    require(['require-config'], function() {
        require(['main-a']);
    });
</script> 

When in production, you'll want to change the paths to point to the build dir as specified by the dir: setting for requirejs:

<script src="/build/require.js"></script>
<script>
    require.config({
        baseUrl: '/build'
    });
    require(['require-config'], function() {
        require(['main-a']);
    });
</script> 

Contributing

In lieu of a formal styleguide, take care to maintain the existing coding style. Add unit tests for any new or changed functionality. Lint and test your code using Grunt.

Release History

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