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bower-resolve

Find the relative path name of a bower module, for use with browserify and debowerify.

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Installation

This module is installed via npm:

$ npm install bower-resolve

Example Usage

First, install some bower modules:

$ bower install js-base64

Then to resolve the path of the main javascript file for a given bower module name:

var bowerResolve = require('bower-resolve');

//Option 1, using a port of bower's internal resolve algorithm
bowerResolve.fastRead('js-base64', function(modulePath){
    //equals %cwd%/bower_components/js-base64/base64.js 
})

//Option 2, using module list provided by bower's programmatic API 
bowerResolve.init(function () {
  bowerResolve('js-base64')
  // returns %cwd%/bower_components/js-base64/base64.js'
});

Usage with browserify/debowerify

This is useful for generating stand-alone libraries with browserify with the debowerify transform:

Let's say you have installed angularjs and jquery using bower:

$ bower install jquery
$ bower install angular

You can build out a common library that will contain the jquery and angular libraries into a file called common.js like so:

// build out angular and jquery to a library file called common.js
var fs = require('fs');
var browserify = require('browserify');
var bowerResolve = require('bower-resolve');
bowerResolve.init(function () {
  var b = browserify();
  b.require(bowerResolve('angular'), { expose: 'angular' });
  b.require(bowerResolve('jquery'), { expose: 'jquery' });
  b.bundle().pipe(fs.createWriteStream('./common.js'));
});

Similarly, if you have some other client-side code that you want to rely on this common code, you can use bowerResolve to help you there, by declaring them as external dependencies:

// app.js
var angular = require('angular');
var jQuery = require('jquery');

jQuery(function ($) {
  console.log(angular);
});

Then build it out using browserify and debowerify as so:

// build out app.js and use the angular and jquery libs from common.js
var fs = require('fs');
var browserify = require('browserify');
var bowerResolve = require('bower-resolve');
bowerResolve.init(function () {
  var b = browserify(['./app.js']);
  b.external(bowerResolve('angular'));
  b.external(bowerResolve('jquery'));
  b.transform('debowerify');
  b.bundle().pipe(fs.createWriteStream('./bundle.js'));
});

Then you'll have common.js that will have your shared code, and bundle.js will have your client code.

Then you can use them together from your HTML app as follows:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Hello, bower</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="common.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="bundle.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>

Disable version checking

Bower module is doing check for new versions of installed components when bowerResolve.init is called. You might want to prevent this behavior. Check is made using Git client, which needs to be installed and available system wide (that might be an issue on Windows). Otherwise whole process will just fail without much useful error message. To disable version checking, use the following:

var bowerResolve = require('bower-resolve');
bowerResolve.offline = true;
bowerResolve.init(function() {....}};