Gracie

This is a web-service which will serve your JS files for you. It does a few spiffy things:

• Concatenate a set of JS files on-the-fly so you only download one file
• Automatically resolve dependencies
• Optionally minify the output
• Do it all really fast (fast code, cached results, support for conditional gets and gzipped responses)

This allows you to accomplish the following objectives:

• Keep JS tidy in as many separate files as you want without peformance concerns
• Get the benefit of concatenated JS without having to constantly update the concatenated files
• Get the benefit of dependency resolution, like you would with any other language (if a.js depends on b.js, you only need to ask for a.js)

This app is written in node.js, but is really not for node.js. You can use it for any web project. It is for clinet-side javascript, not server-side.

Installation

npm install gracie

Synopsis

Using as a standalone server

Run the server

gracie /path/to/js

Request your files

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://js.mysite.com/gracie?sources=a.js,b.js,c.js"></script>

And if the first line of c.js looks like this:

//require d.js

Then d.js will be included in the output.

You can also request minfied output

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://js.mysite.com/gracie?sources=a.js,b.js,c.js&minify=1"></script>

And you can have multiple source directories

gracie /path/to/js1 /path/to/js2

Advanced integration with Node.js projects

If your project is written in Node.js and you are using connect, then you have two more options. First, set up the connect middleware.

app.configure(function() {
    ...
    require('gracie').connect('/js', ['/path/to/js'])
    ...
});

The first parameter is the pathname that Gracie should handle. The second is an array of javascript source directories. With this in place, you can use your existing connect server to serve your js.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.mysite.com/js?sources=a.js,b.js,c.js"></script>

The connect middleware will also make the Gracie Server instance available on all requests so you can request JavaScript content on-the-fly and embed it directly in the page. To do this, you'll want to generate the JavaScript in your controller and pass it to your view.

var minify = true;
req.gracieServer.getContent(['cool.js'], function(err, gracieResponse) {
    res.render('myview.ejs', {
        locals: { jsCode: gracieResponse.content }
    }); 
}, minify);

Then, in your view, display the content. Be sure not to escape it.

<script type="text/javascript"><%- jsCode %></script>

Tech Details about the bundled server

• Supports Conditional Gets.
• Supports GZip compression.
• Requests are cached. Cache is expired as needed when underlying files are modified.

License

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2011 Dustin McQuay, Synchros Interactive

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.