CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptaurelia
William
William

Reputation: 4588

What is the step-by-step procedure for installing any npm module with Aurelia CLI?

I wanted to install jquery and found instructions here:

http://aurelia.io/hub.html#/doc/article/aurelia/framework/latest/contact-manager-tutorial/4

I then wanted to install "moment.js" and found instructions here ( I am not using typescript) :

How to import Moment-Timezone with Aurelia/Typescript

To install both of these with the Aurelia CLI the procedure is to install the respective npm module and then to manually modify aurelia.json in some way so the app recognizes it.

In the case of moments the instructions then say to place an import at the top of app.js , but this is not the case for JQuery.

First off , is there any way the changes to aurelia.json can be automated ( like a regular node.js package.json) so I don't need to manually do it and second, how do I know what modifications I am expected to make to aurelia.json ( or app.js or any other file) for the module I want to install?

With a basic node.js app its pretty simple , just npm install. With Aurelia its much more confusing.

Edit: There is also JSPM which I've read is used for front end libraries like the ones I mentioned above. However, the links with instructions for installation that I posted are not using JSPM.

Edit

I found some of the answers here: http://aurelia.io/hub.html#/doc/article/aurelia/framework/latest/the-aurelia-cli/6

Upvotes: 3

Views: 550

Answers (1)

Erik Lieben
Erik Lieben

Reputation: 1247

The CLI is still under development. I think the automatic adding of a package might some day be included in the CLI itself, for example with an install command.

The extra registration is required to register the package correctly for usage with RequireJS (http://requirejs.org/). And if the plugin exists of more than just 1 file, this registration is a bit more complex then just adding the name of the plugin.

There is an experimental CLI task here https://github.com/martonsagi/aurelia-cli-pacman that will do the automation for you.

Which can be installed by running:

npm install aurelia-cli-pacman -D

The above will install the package manager and register/ include itself in the tasks in your current project (be sure to run it with install, because npm won't run the post install script if you run it the i shorthand). Next, you can run the following command to install an extension:

npm i aurelia-interactjs -S

au pacman i aurelia-interactjs

The only downside for many might be that currently there aren't that many registry entries, but I think the author of the package would be very happy if you help him out by creating a pull to extend the registry. Would take you some time to figure out what would be the correct install/ import settings, but you will help out someone else and make them happy when they hit the same problem you experience :-).

JSPM has a same sort of issue around this, only is more matured/ the registry is bigger and/ or authors added specific information for JSPM installations to their package.json. For example: To install the above plugin with JSPM it will use the following highlighted section https://github.com/eriklieben/aurelia-interactjs/blob/master/package.json#L72,L86. The same is currently not possible with aurelia-cli, because the installation is done by NPM instead of through JSPM that redirects it to NPM.

If the author of the plugin didn't specify the JSPM section in the package.json, you would most likely and up with the same sort of issues. JSPM has a similar registry (https://github.com/jspm/registry/tree/master/package-overrides/npm) as aurelia-cli-pacman.

Upvotes: 2

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