Concatenate NPM package into one JS file

Question

I am trying to get Swig (the template language) working on Parse Cloud Code with Express. Parse Cloud Code is a Node/Express host that doesn't allow NPM. Ridiculous, I know. I can still load external files into code with requires statements however, so I think that there's hope I can get this working.

So my question is how do I get the whole entire Swig package into a single JS file that I can include from my Parse Express app like so:

var swig = require("./cloud/swig.js");

Worth noting that Parse breaks normal require statements so that the NPM package as-is doesn't work without modifying each and every single file in the node_modules folder to have cloud in its path (which is why my above path has cloud in it). Parse also chokes while uploading lots of small files. Concatenation is a need on this platform.

I have tried playing with browserify for hours, but no combination of anything I do makes exposes the Swig object when I load the browserified file with the require statement. I think it may be the right option since the Browserified file includes all the files from Swig, but it doesn't expose them externally.

My question is either can this be done in browserify, and if so, how? Or is there another way to concatenate a NPM repo down to one file so it can be more easily included from this platform?

Thanks so much.

Answer 1

Browserify is not the right tool for the job.

As the name implies, browserify is intended to be used to generate files you want to execute in the browser. It walks the require calls from an entrypoint (ie some JS file you pass to browserify) and bundles them in an object that maps their names to functions wrapping the modules. It does not expect a require function to already exist and doesn't make any use of it. It substitutes its own implementation of require that only does one thing: look up names from the bundle, execute the matching function and return its exports .

You could theoretically require a browserify bundle, but it would just return an empty object (although it might mess with globals). And in all likelihood it might break because the bundled modules think they are being executed in a browser. This won't do any good.

The only sane option if you want to stick with the host, is to copy over the node_modules folder from your local project folder. This may not work if your computer and the server are not 100% compatible (eg 32-bit vs 64-bit, Debian vs RedHat, OSX/Windows vs Linux) but this mostly depends on your exact dependencies (basically anything that is built with node-gyp can be a problem).

Node.js uses the node_modules folder when looking up dependencies in require calls automagically. If you can somehow get a node_modules folder with the right contents on the server, require("foo") will work as long as node_modules contains a module foo .

Answer 2

Ultimately, you are trying to use npm modules in Parse Cloud code and currently it's not possible:

https://parse.com/questions/using-npm-modules-in-cloud-code

But if you are only trying to use Swig, then as a work-around, you can consider using underscore template instead. Parse already includes underscore:

https://parse.com/docs/cloud_modules_guide#underscore