CODEWITHSUNDEEP
requirejs
machineghost
machineghost

Reputation: 35750

Is there any way to define global dependencies in Require.js?

Backstory:

I've currently got a Require.js and jQuery/Backbone.js using site. Until now, jQuery and Backbone have stayed outside of Require, letting me do:

define([], function() {
    // NOTE: Using Backbone and $ without an import!
    new Backbone.View(el: $('#foo');
});

That's worked really well: without that approach, just about every module in my site would have to add a Backbone/jQuery dependency.

But then the other day I needed to package up a portion of our code as an external library. I made a separate require config file for it, and everything seemed great, until I compiled ("optimized") all the files in to a single library file, and realized that Backbone/jQuery (and related plug-ins/libraries) weren't getting included.

So, I added a bunch of shims, and got Backbone, jQuery, and all the related libraries in to Require. However, I still have a ton of modules that expect $ and Backbone to just exist. That should be ok, because Backbone/jQuery both register their variables globally, but it's not because of Require's load order.

Basically, any module without dependencies is broken, because they load before Require loads the jQuery/Backbone shim. Any modules that have dependencies don't have this issue, because jQuery/Backbone have already been loaded by the time they get loaded.

It seems like my only option is to add an explicit Backbone/jQuery to every module without dependencies. I've got a bunch of modules like that though, and ideally I'd prefer not to have to import jQuery/Backbone anywhere.

Question

So, my question is: is there any way to tell Require "load these X modules/shims before you load everything else"? Or, to put it another way, is there any way to tell Require that all of my modules depend on certain other modules?

I thought putting Backbone at the top of my initial require:

require(['backbone', ...

but that didn't help; the other dependency-less modules still load before it.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 2611

Answers (1)

Louis
Louis

Reputation: 151380

I see no reason this would not work:

require(['backbone', 'jquery'], function () {
    require(['main']);
});

The idea is to wrap what was your initial entry point to your application in a require call that loads Backbone and jQuery. If the modules of your application are loaded only because main is required (that is, if there is no require call elsewhere that loads any module needed by main), then with the code above both Backbone and jQuery are guaranteed to be loaded before any of the modules used by main are.

Upvotes: 6

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