Node.JS / Require.JS / Almond.js compatible define

[requirejs]

Node.JS / Require.JS / Almond.js compatible define

[jrburke]

How does it fail for almond? Is define() not a function when that code runs? If so, how is the file created? Hopefully almond.js is at the beginning of the file, with this snippet some time later. At first look, it seems OK, but if you have many modules following this pattern and they have dependencies, I expect the r.js optimizer will have trouble finding all the define() calls, as it looks for top level define calls and skips ones that are calls on an object as shown above.

[Rush]

The generated code looks like this:

define("themes/colored", function(){});

({
    define: typeof define === "function" ? define : function(A, F) {
        module.exports = F.apply(null, A.map(require));
        DOMParser = require('xmldom').DOMParser;
        XMLSerializer = require('xmldom').XMLSerializer;
}
 }).
define([], function() {

});

As you can see the dependency will be found but undefined ...

I have found different pattern to work though, but it would be nice if the first one worked:

var DOMParser;
var XMLSerializer;
var define;
if (typeof define !== "function") {
    define = function(A, F) {
        module.exports = F.apply(null, A.map(require));
        DOMParser = require('xmldom').DOMParser;
        XMLSerializer = require('xmldom').XMLSerializer;
    }
}

[jrburke]

OK, so if that second one works, it is due to the define() scanning done by the r.js optimizer to create the minified file. It is not finding the define() call to insert the module ID.

define method calls on an object are not matched by the r.js optimizer because there are libraries, most notably uglifyjs, that created a define property on an object, for their own internal API, and it is not the AMD define().

If the r.js optimizer matched on those cases, it would break code like that. So there are no plans to match on that property access pattern as it will create more bugs than it helps as far as define adapter shims. I agree that it limits the structure of those shims, but it is the result of an API-based module pattern, and mixing that code with other code that could have its own other meaning for a similar looking API.