Friday, April 26, 2013

Loading jQuery plugins using require.js and backbone.js

I recently began using backbone.js through the package grunt-bbb.  I ran into a little bit of trouble loading external javascript libraries through require.js, specifically jQuery plugins.


For anyone new to backbone.js development, I would strongly advise you check out grunt-bbb.  It is a framework and build system for backbone.js.  It provides commands to generate scaffolding and for building/testing/linting your project.

Below are instructions specific to grunt-bbb, but can easily be adapted to any project using require.js.


require.js configuration provides a `shim` option. According to the docs:

Configure the dependencies and exports for older, traditional "browser globals" scripts that do not use define() to declare the dependencies and set a module value. 


This allows you to define what order packages are loaded in.  This is necessary because your jQuery plugin relies on jQuery.

In your require.js config it is important to provide both the location of your plugin and specify that jQuery is dependent on your plugin



The above code points to where the js plugins are located (without.js extension) and registers them as
 dependent on jQuery.
Now all you have to do is load the scripts in your module's define statement:
define(["app", 'prettyPhoto', 'jqueryui' ], function(app) {
});
The plugins are loaded by the key you define in `paths` object! 

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