What I'm trying to do is adapt my jQuery-plugin to work with jQuery on Node.js.
From what I understand, CommonJS in it's most basic form requires a library to be wrapped in a closure, and that closure should be made available as a parameter of an 'exports' parameter. That way, the code is neatly contained in its own namespace (via a named variable) and doesn't pollute the global namespace.
jQuery itself should fall under the '$' namespace.
Ala:
var $ = require(jquery);
But my plugin should also fit under the '$' namespace.
Plugin code:
(function( $ ) {
// plugin code goes here
})(jquery);
exports.jquery = jquery // will this work?
Ex:
var $ = require(jquery);
$ = require(jquery-csv.js); // will this work?
To work in the browser, everything is setup to be callable from the '$' namespace even though my modules are setup as a sub-namespace of '$' (ie '$.csv').
Is there a standard way to do multiple requires on a single namespace? If not, there a viable alternative (ex doing a shallow copy on the plugin code)?
Note: The anonymous function wrapper follows the standard jquery guidelines.
Note: This fix will be applied to the jquery-csv plugin.
You should require jQuery inside your plugin:
var $ = require("jquery");
This is also the technique in UMD (Universal Module Definition), a standard for both CommonJS and AMD.
Also see the example for a jQuery plugin with UMD
Easiest way I can think of doing something like this would be doing something like the following:
var $ = require("jquery");
require("jquery-csv")($);
That also means you can just do something like this:
module.exports = exports = function (jquery) {
//You modify the jquery object here.
};
Modification of the $ object should be done in accordance to jQuery plugins recommendations. I will believe you are already aware of them for what you said.
I'm sure someone will come up with a smarter way :) but this should work for now. You could also just return a modified jquery object and then assign it to the $ object on the scope in which you originally included the module.
The answer turned out to be simpler than I thought...
var $ = jQuery = require('jquery');
require('./jquery.csv.js');
Calling 'require' without assigning it to a variable/namespace acts the same as a script import (ie it can manipulate objects that exist in the global namespace).
The first line takes care of properly initializing jquery. Once that's done, jquery-csv can modify the existing '$' namespace the same way it does in the browser.
The second assignment 'jQuery' is necessary because that's where jquery-csv grabs the reference to the 'jquery' instance. This could probably be shortened to only assign to '$' but 'jQuery' is the value that the plugin guidelines specify for referencing the library.