module-concat

Fairly lightweight CommonJS module concatenation tool

What is it?

This library exposes a single function and stream API that concatenates CommonJS modules within a project. This can be used to obfuscate an entire project into a single file. It can also be used to write client-side JavaScript code where each file is written just like a Node.js module.

Why?

Because projects like Webpack and Browserify are cool, but they are a little heavy for my taste. I just wanted something to compile CommonJS modules into a single JavaScript file. This project has one dependency: resolve

Install

npm install module-concat

Note: Used to be called node-module-concat but has since been renamed.

Usage

var modConcat = require("module-concat");
var outputFile = "./project/concatenated.js";
modConcat("./project/index.js", outputFile, function(err, stats) {
    if(err) throw err;
    console.log(stats.files.length + " were combined into " + outputFile);
});

API

var modConcat = require("module-concat");

var stream = new modConcat.ModuleConcatStream(entryModulePath [, options])

Constructs a Readable Stream of the concatenated project.

• entryModulePath - the path to the entry point of the project to be concatenated. This might be an index.js file, for example.
• options - object to specify any of the following options:

  • outputPath - the path where the concatenated project file will be written. Provide this whenever possible to ensure that instances of __dirname and __filename are replaced properly. If __dirname and __filename are not used in your project or your project dependencies, it is not necessary to provide this path. This has no effect when the browser option is set.

  • excludeFiles - An Array of files that should be excluded from the project even if they were referenced by a require(...).

    Note: These require statements should probably be wrapped with a conditional or a try/catch block to prevent uncaught exceptions.

  • excludeNodeModules - (boolean or Array) Set to true if all modules loaded from node_modules folders should be excluded from the project. Alternatively, set to an Array of module names to be excluded from the project.

    For example, require("foobar") will not be replaced if excludeNodeModules is set to an Array containing "foobar" or if excludeNodeModules is set to true.

  • extensions - An Array of extensions that will be appended to the required module path to search for the module in the file system. Defaults to [".js", ".json"].

    For example, require("./foo") will search for:

    • ./foo
    • ./foo.js
    • ./foo.json in that order, relative to the file containing the require statement.

    Another example, require("./foo.js") will search for:

    • ./foo.js
    • ./foo.js.js
    • ./foo.js.json

    Note: ".node" file extensions are considered to be native C/C++ addons and are always excluded from the build.

  • compilers - An Object describing how files with certain file extensions should be compiled to JavaScript before being included in the project. The example below will allow module-concat to handle require statements pointing to *.coffee files (i.e. require("./foo.coffee")). These modules are compiled using the coffee-script compiler before they are included in the project.

    {
        // Sample compiler for coffee-script
        ".coffee": (src, options, path) => require("coffee-script").compile(src),
        // Sample compiler for Riot.js tags
        ".tag": (src, options, path) =>
            // Note: Variable `riot` needs to be available in the tag module
            "const riot = require('riot');" +
                // The compiled tag will contain references to `riot`
                riot.compile(src, {
                    // Maybe the *.tag files are Pug templates?
                    "template": "pug",
                    // And maybe scoped styles are written in Stylus?
                    "style": "stylus",
                    "compact": true
                }, path)
    }

    options are passed along to the compiler function, as shown above. path is the path of the file being processed.

    Note: By default, ".json" files are prepended with module.exports =. This behavior can be overwritten by explicitly specifying the ".json" key in the compilers Object.

    Note: By default, the file extensions specified in compilers are not added to the extensions option, so require("./foo") will not find ./foo.coffee unless ".coffee" is explicitly added to extensions (see above).

  • browser - Set to true when concatenating this project for the browser. In this case, whenever a required library is loaded from node_modules, the browser field in the package.json file (if found) is used to determine which file to actually include in the project.

    module-concat provides limited support of the package.json browser field spec. More specifically, it will properly handle the "basic" case where browser is a string. When browser is an Object, module-concat only works properly in certain instances. For example, if the specific file replaced matches the main field, it works fine. Also, if a specific file is ignored (i.e. value is set to false), its resolved path is simply added to the excludeFiles array.

    Unfortunately, ignoring module names (i.e. not specific files) is not supported. Also, replacing module names (or specific files) do not work if the replaced file does not match the main field. This might be improved in the future...

  • allowUnresolvedModules - Set to true to prevent unresolved modules from throwing an Error; instead, the require(...) expression will not be replaced, and the unresolved module will be added to stats.unresolvedModules (see below). Defaults to false so Errors are thrown for unresolved modules.

  • Any option supported by resolve.sync except basedir and packageFilter, which can be overwritten.

  • Any option supported by the Readable class

stream.getStats()

Returns an Object containing statistics about the files included in the project. This object is available after the 'end' event is fired and there is no more data to consume. Properties include:

• files - An Array of files included in the project
• addonsExcluded - An Array of files excluded from the project because they are native C/C++ add-ons.
• unresolvedModules - An Array of modules that could not be included in the project because they could not be found. Each element in the Array is an Object containing these properties:
  • parent - the full path of the file containing the require expression
  • module - the name or path to the module that could not be found

modConcat(entryModule, outputPath, [options, cb])

Helper function that constructs a new ModuleConcatStream (see above) with the following options and pipes the concatenated project to the outputPath.

• entryModule - the path to the entry point of the project to be concatenated. This might be an index.js file, for example.
• outputFile - the path where the concatenated project file will be written.
• options - See options for ModuleConcatStream above.
• cb - Callback of the form cb(err, stats). If no callback is provided, a Promise is returned instead, which resolves to the stats Object returned by stream.getStats() (see above).

Known limitations

• Dynamic require() statements don't work (i.e. require("./" + variable))
• require.resolve calls are not modified
• require.cache statements are not modified
• Limited support of package browser field spec
• Won't add any horsepower to your sports car. :(