gulp-require-angular

npm install gulp-require-angular --save-dev

What

A gulp plugin which scans your AngularJS project source files and generates a single js file full of require() statements which can be then used as an entry file for Browserify or Webpack. Only AngularJS modules which appear in the dependency tree of your mainModule are require()'d. Supports modules installed with bower too.

Why

So that the majority of your code base will be automatically require()'d in the correct order while still enabling you use require() where you want.

How

See demos for working examples. Also here's a fork of angular-seed with gulp-require-angular and browserify

Write your app using standard AngularJS syntax. e.g.

app.js

angular.module('myApp', ['moduleA']);

moduleA/moduleA.js

angular.module('moduleA', []);

moduleA/moduleA.ctrl.js

angular.module('moduleA').controller('abc',function ($scope) {
});

Use the plugin as part of your gulp task

var gulp = require('gulp');
var requireAngular = require('gulp-require-angular');
 
gulp.task('requireAngular', function () {
    gulp.src(['src/**/*.js'])
        .pipe(requireAngular('myApp'))
        .pipe(gulp.dest('src/'))
});

The above will generate a file named (by default) gulp-require-angular.generated.js which will contain:

require('./app.js');
require('./moduleA/moduleA.js');
require('./moduleA/moduleA.ctrl.js');

You then use gulp-require-angular.generated.js as the entry file for Browserify or Webpack. The benefit of this is that all your Angular is automatically required, while you can still use require() inside your controllers / services / directives to pull in non angular modules / templates / css depending on your Browserify transforms / Webpack loaders. e.g. you might have a charting directive that uses an existing a non angular charting library. One of the cleanest ways to pull in that external library dependency is to require() it:

var nonAngularPieChart = require('./nonAngularPieChart');
 
angular.module('pieChart', []).directive('pieChart', function () {
    return {
        restrict: 'A',
        link: function (scope, element, attrs) {
            var options = scope.$eval(attrs.chartOptions);
            nonAngularPieChart(element, options);
        }
    };
});

Usage

The plugin will only find modules if angular.module is used. If you alias the variable angular or have modules in minifed code, e.g. a.module, it will not be found. You must use unminified versions of third party modules like ui-router, ngResource etc in your project src.

The function

requireAngular('mainModule', options);

mainModule

mainModule is the name of the module entry point used to calculate the module dependency tree. This is your top level module, and is going to be the same module name found in ng-app.

options

Object with the following default properties

{		
    filename: 'gulp-require-angular.generated.js',
    rebase: './',
    base: '',	
    errorOnMissingModules: false,
    bower: false,
    mainBowerFiles: {}
}

filename

The name of the generated .js file.

rebase

The base path to apply to all require statements.

base

The directory to place the generated file. By default it is the base path of everything in gulp.src

errorOnMissingModules

When a module appears in the dependency tree, but cannot be found in a file, emit an error or not.

bower

To look for bower installed packages or not. If true, bower.json must be present. Will only look for bower packages which are installed, i.e. listed as dependencies in bower.json.

mainBowerFiles

Options object to pass through to bower-main-files