TinyAMD: A tiny loader for Javascript AMD modules

TinyAMD is a lightweight loader of AMD modules designed for production use. It uses head.js to load Javascript files asynchronously. The main use case is when your application is large and could be split it into separate files, to be lazily loaded at runtime.

Here are the issues that prevent doing this with the current AMD loaders:

There are a lot of ways to define Javascript modules that follow the AMD specification.
Require.js and similar are huge and full of options for broad compatibility.
The almond shim is nice and small but cannot load modules dynamically

TinyAMD supports one single format for defining AMD modules:

define("module_name", ["dependency1", "dependency2"], function (dependency1, dependency2) {
  /* ... module code here ... */
  return the_module;
})

The dependencies array may be omitted when the module does not have dependencies. The return value of the factory function is used as the module.

No module.exports, no require('dependency') calls inside the factory function body.

A word of warning

This is work in progress! I haven't even tested it. It might well blow up your web server. Handle with care.

Download

Development: tinyamd-X.X.X.js
Production: tinyamd-X.X.X.min.js

both files already include head.js

Load the script with a <script> tag in the <head> section of your web page. You can now define modules using the standard AMD format described above, and require them as follows:

To require a module that is already defined:

var MyModule = require('my_module');

will throw an error if module_name is not already defined.
To asynchronously load a module, call require with an array as its first argument (even for a single file), and pass a callback function which will get called with the module as an argument once the module and its dependencies have been loaded and defined.
```
`require(['my_module'], function(MyModule) { /* do something amazing */ });`
```
This will load the Javascript file {{baseUrl}}/my_module.js, and expects it to define a module named my_module. The file may indeed define other modules.

To customize the baseUrl, include the following Javascript code before the <script> tag that loads tinyamd:
```
<script type='text/javascript'>
var tinyamd_config = {baseUrl: 'http://example.com/my/url/'};
</script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='tinyamd-X.X.X.js' />
```

Contribute

Clone this repository
run bower install to fetch the headjs sources
run npm install to install grunt and other modules needed for build

You can now edit the src/tinyamd.coffee source file, and then

run grunt watch to rebuild the development files whenever you save the source file
run grunt to rebuild the development and production files.

davb/tinyamd

TinyAMD: A tiny loader for Javascript AMD modules

A word of warning

Download

Contribute