On part 1 of Working With JavaScript Plugins in ember-cli , we explore how to work with JavaScript plugins which are still distributed as globas and came up with a pattern for wrapping up globals while using the module system.

In this article, we’ll explore how to work with libraries which include a named AMD distribution.

Working with libraries with named AMD distributions.

Before the addons system exist the easiest way to distribute JavaScript libraries to be consume in ember-cli was to have a distribution with a named-AMD version, then importing such library using app.import and whitelisting the library’s exports.

On of the libraries distributed in this way is ic-ajax an “Ember-friendly jQuery.ajax wrapper”, if we navigate to the lib/main.js we’ll notice that the source of the application is written with ES6 syntax but it is distributed in different formats so you can consume it like a global or in a module format.

As mentioned in the previously post loader.js doesn’t work with anonymous AMD distributions so if we want to include ic-ajax we need to use the named-amd output.

Let’s create a new ember-cli project like ember new amd-example

Once the project has been created, let’s go to the directory and run the following command

npm uninstall ember-cli-ic-ajax --save-dev

The library we just removed is an ember-cli addon which wraps all the steps we are about to do but we won’t be using it since we are interested in learning how things are working under the hood and what are we gaining when using the addon.

Next we need to add the library to bower, we can do so with bower install ic-ajax --save , once installed let’s import it in our Brocfile.js as follows:

app . import ( 'bower_components/ic-ajax/dist/named-amd/main.js' );

ic-ajax default export is the request function which allows us to make request and manage them as if they were promises, we’ll use request to pull data from our backend.

We’ll be using ember-cli’s proxy to connect to a public API from my Ember.js book: ember-cli 101, pull some data and then render it in the index template.

Let’s start by creating an index route with the following command: ember g route index and then put the following content in app/routes/index.js :

import Ember from 'ember' ; // // Here we are importing the default export from ic-ajax and assigning it to // the variable request // import request from 'ic-ajax' ; export default Ember . Route . extend ({ model : function () { // // We'll be loading a collection from a resource called friends, it will // response with a JSON array which main key is friends // // We can see this response going to http://api.ember-cli-101.com/api/friends // return request ( '/api/friends' ). then ( function ( data ){ return { friendsCount : data . friends . length }; }); } });

And then replace app/templates/index.hbs so it uses friendsCount :

<h1> Total friends in api.ember-cli-101.com {{friendsCount}} </h1>

The previous code is correct but we’ll see an error when running ember server, try the following:

$ ember server --proxy http://api.ember-cli-101.com version: 0.0.46 Proxying to http://api.ember-cli-101.com Livereload server on port 35729 Serving on http://0.0.0.0:4200 ENOENT, no such file or directory '/borrowers/tmp/tree_merger-tmp_dest_dir-KIfHrFRc.tmp/ic-ajax.js' Error: ENOENT, no such file or directory '/borrowers/tmp/tree_merger-tmp_dest_dir-KIfHrFRc.tmp/ic-ajax.js' ...

At the beginning of the article we mentioned that part of the process on consuming named AMD libraries was to use app.import and whitelist the library’s exports without explaining what we meant with the later.

During the build process all our files under app/ go through a transformation step where the ES6 Modules are converted to AMD format , when something like the following is found import request from 'ic-ajax'; internally the tool in charge of transpiling the code, checks if that is something already registered in the module system and if not it tries to find the module and convert it to the proper format, in the previous scenario it will try to find a file called ic-ajax.js , but since it is a library we are including externally such file doesn’t exist hence causing the build to fail.

Whitelisting in this context means telling the tool in charge of transforming our ES6 Modules to AMD that whenever import request from 'ic-ajax' is found, then assume is already included so it doesn’t try to resolve it.

To do so we pass an option called exports to app.import which whitelist ic-ajax and and its exports . The exports are also used to whitelist variables in JSHint .

In the Brocfile.js , let’s replace the call to import with the following:

app . import ( 'bower_components/ic-ajax/dist/named-amd/main.js' , { exports : { 'ic-ajax' : [ 'default' , 'defineFixture' , 'lookupFixture' , 'raw' , 'request' , ] } });

If we run ember server --proxy http://api.ember-cli-101.com we’ll see that everything works and we’ll see the friends count in our index visiting http://localhost:4200/

ember-cli-ic-ajax

We started the chapter by removing ember-cli-ic-ajax which is an addon wrapping the call to import and include the exports for us, if we inspect the index file in the addon, we’ll notice that it has almost the same things we added to our Brocfile.js .

Now that we understand how importing named AMD libraries works, we can remove the import for ic-ajax from the Brocfile.js and use it via the addon , let’s run the following commands and then stop and start the server, everything should work:

$ bower uninstall ic-ajax --save $ npm i ember-cli-ic-ajax --save

Protip

Did you know ember-cli has an .ember-cli file where you can specify the default value for some commands? Instead of passing --proxy all the time to our ember server command, we can edit the .ember-cli to include the proxy option as follows:

{ "disableAnalytics" : false , "proxy" : "http://api.ember-cli-101.com" }

With that we can run ember server and it will read the --proxy option from the .ember-cli file.

Getting started with Ember.js? I’m writing an Ember.js book, learn Ember.js with ember-cli-101. Ping me on #ember-cli-101 in Freenode if you have any question about it