JSTools 0.6

assorted python tools for building (packing, aggregating) javascript libraries

‘JSTools’ is a collection of utilities for managing JavaScript libraries.

Install

Until jstools is released into pypi, we suggest checking out jstools and installing using either ‘python setup.py install’ or ‘python setup.py develop’ from within your checkout.

Requirements

Should be python 2.4 friendly, tested most on python 2.5

Easy Install

$ easy_install jstools

This will put the following scripts in ‘/your/python/distribution/bin’:

$ bin/jsbuild
$ bin/jsmin

Depending on your system, this action may require sudo.

Environment Install

‘jstools’ includes a script to create a contained python environment. This script also automatically downloads the yui compressor and puts it in a place jstools can find it.

This script will turn a folder of your choice into a python environment [1] with the jstools scripts installed in a directory called ‘bin’:

$ easy_install -b ./ -e jstools
$ python jstools/install_jstools ./jsdir

This makes ‘jsdir’ jstools enabled with it’s own ‘bin’. source the script ‘bin/activate’, and now jsbuild and jsmin are on your path:

$ cd jsdir
$ . bin/activate

Other Distribution Options

You can download jstools in whatever flavor your prefer:

$ wget http://github.com/whitmo/jstools/tarball/master
$ svn co http://svn.opengeo.org/jstools/trunk/ # not currently working
$ git clone git://github.com/whitmo/jstools.git

Scripts

jsbuild

Merges and compresses files according to a configuration file. jsbuild will walk each root directory specified in configuration, index all the files ending with .js and then compile an aggregate source based on the specification in the config file and the dependencies declared inside the files themselves.

Usage

jsbuild <config_file> [options]

Options

Usage: jsbuild [options] filename1.cfg [filename2.cfg…]

Options:

-h, --help

show this help message and exit

-u, --uncompress

Don’t compresses aggregated javascript. jsbuild defaults to applying ‘jsmin’ to all output.

-v, --verbose

print more info

-l, --list-only

Only list javascript files that would have been merged

-o OUTPUT_DIR, --output=OUTPUT_DIR

Output directory for files jsbuild creates (defaults to current directory)

-r RESOURCE_DIR, --resource=RESOURCE_DIR

base directory for resource files (for interpolation)

-b ROOT_DIR, --base-dir=ROOT_DIR

base directory for root dirs (defaults to current directory)

-j SINGLE_FILE, --just=SINGLE_FILE

New in 1.1: Only create file for this section

-s CONCAT, --single-file-build=CONCAT

New in 1.1. Create a single file of all of possible output

-c COMPRESSOR, --compressor=COMPRESSOR

New in 1.1. Specify compressor plugin to use in form {specifier}:{‘arguments_string’}.

Configuration Format

A config file may have multiple uniquely named output files (ie multiple sections).

A section is formatted in the following fashion:

[Output.js]
root=
     path/to/where/files/are
     other/path/to/where/files/are

license=path/to/license/for/these/libs

first=
     3rd/prototype.js
     core/application.js
     core/params.js

last=
    core/api.js

exclude=
     3rd/exclude/file.js
     3rd/exclude/dir
     r:3rd/exclude/.*debug.js
#...

The files listed in the first section will be forced to load before all other files (in the order listed). The files in last section will be forced to load after all the other files (in the order listed).

The files list in the exclude section will not be imported. An exclude entry can be a relative path to a file or directory, or can be a python regular expression starting with pattern r:, see python re syntax: http://docs.python.org/library/re.html#regular-expression-syntax

The configuration allows for the interpolation of variables defined in the config file. ‘%(resource-dir)s’ may be subsituted for the value of the -r flag.

Lines commented using ‘#’ will be ignored.

If an include section is defined, jsbuild will only build listed files from this section and theirs dependencies, else all files from root section will be built.

Dependency Syntax

File merging uses cues inside the candidate javascript files to determine dependencies. Two types of dependencies are specified with two different comment formats within source files.

To specify that a target files must be included before a given source file, include a comment of the following format:

// @requires <file path>

e.g.

// @requires Geo/DataSource.js

To specify that a target file must be included at any place in the merged build - before or after a given source file - include a comment in the source file of the following format:

// @include <file path>

e.g.

// @include Geo/DataSource.js

Note that the “exclude” list in a configuration file will override dependencies specified by the @requires and @include comment directives described above.

jsmin

Compresses an input stream of javascript to an output stream

Usage

jsmin < cat some.js > some-compressed.js

License

– The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil. –

see file for complete copyright

License

Mixed. same as OpenLayers unless otherwhise noted

Buildout Support

see jstools/bo.txt

Run Tests

in the src dir in an environment w/ yuicomp installed:

$ easy_install nose
$ paver get_yuicomp
$ cd test
$ nosetests {options}

or most simply:

$ python setup.py test

Credits

jstools started as a collection of build scripts as part of the OpenLayers Project[#]_.

Whit Morriss (whit at opengeo.org) repackaged these scripts as jstools and Tim Schaub (tschaub at opengeo.org) did extensive reworking of tsort.

[1]

See virtualenv for more information about the python environment. You may activate and deactivate this environment to add the installed scripts to your path, localize python package installs and other niceties ala:

$ source bin/activate
$ deactivate

[2]

OpenLayers Homepage and the original scripts