wire factory plugins: name in root of spec?

[Ben Tremblay]

It seems like can't put a plugin declaration in the root of the wire spec.

Am I wrong? ( in the example below assume I declared a plugin with a factory named "myCustomPlugin" in the plugins node)

Main.js
{
myCustomPlugin:{
}
}

[Benjamin Tremblay]

Why do I want to do this?
To declare factory to build a collection of components with as little JSON as possible.

Benjamin Tremblay

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "cujojs" group.
> To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/cujojs/T7JRuqq2Hu0/unsubscribe.
> To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to cujojs+un...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to cuj...@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cujojs.
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cujojs/7562e10e-8039-41b9-8a60-f8d5996d7845%40googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Brian Cavalier]

Hey Ben,

I think I understand your question, but I want to make sure:  Are you asking if plugins can be inherited from a parent wire spec to a child wire spec?

Currently, they can't.  The original reasoning was that plugin inheritance would create dependencies on plugins *somewhere* up the hierarchy, which could break child specs if someone refactors a parent and removes a plugin, for example.

That said, I'm not so sure I find that to be a super-convincing argument anymore :)  There are plenty of other things that are inherited from somewhere up the hierarch.  For example, component names in parent specs are visible in child specs (and thus can be $ref'd).

Typically, though, plugins are pretty compact to declare:

$plugins: ['this/plugin', 'that/plugin']

Are you using lots of plugins, such that your $plugins declaration is getting unwieldy?

On Tuesday, December 9, 2014 10:25:04 AM UTC-5, Ben Tremblay wrote:

Why do I want to do this?
To declare factory to build a collection of components with as little  JSON as possible.

Benjamin Tremblay

> On Dec 9, 2014, at 9:15 AM, Ben Tremblay <ben.tr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It seems like can't put a plugin declaration in the root of the wire spec.
>
> Am I wrong? ( in the example below assume I declared a plugin with a factory named "myCustomPlugin" in the plugins node)
>
> Main.js
> {
>    myCustomPlugin:{
>    }
> }
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "cujojs" group.
> To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/cujojs/T7JRuqq2Hu0/unsubscribe.

> To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to cujojs+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

[Ben Tremblay]

I am asking an even simpler question, I think.

define({

    // It looks like I have to do this to use my factory 'myPluginFactory'

    someComponent: {

        myPluginFactory: {

            customProp: 'hello'

        }

    }

    // And it looks like I can NOT do this:

    myPluginFactory: {

        customProp: 'hello'

    }

});

To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to cujojs+un...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to cuj...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cujojs.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cujojs/2520b33d-d3e2-417a-ac96-dd0adfa5ec34%40googlegroups.com.

[Ben Tremblay]

Including the plugin for clarity:

define({

    // It looks like I have to do this to use my factory 'myPluginFactory'

    someComponent: {

        myPluginFactory: {

            customProp: 'hello'

        }

    }

    // And it looks like I can NOT do this:

    myPluginFactory: {

        customProp: 'hello'

    }

    $plugins: [{

        module: 'modules/plugins/myPluginFactory',

        pretty: true

    }]

});

[Edan Schwartz]

Ok, I think I get what you're saying now. So you've made a factory plugin called 'myPluginFactory', and you're trying to figure out why it won't work outside of a component definition.

From what I understand, factory plugins allow you to accept configuration for creating an object. If you're factory isn't used within the context of a component, an object could be created, but there would be nothing to assign it to. There would also be no way for wire to know that you're trying to use a factory plugin, and some just creating a plain object like `context.myPluginFactory = { customProp: 'hello' }`.

Consider the built-in 'create' factory plugin.

define({
  // This uses the create factory to create a component
  // from the AMD module 'some/component',
  // with args ('foo', 'bar')
  // and assigns the created object to `context.someComponent`
  someComponent: {
    create: {
      module: 'some/component',
      args: ['foo', 'bar']
    }
  },

  // this does not use the create factory,
  // as we haven't told wire the name of the object
  // we want to create.
  create: {
    module: 'some/component',
    args: ['foo', 'bar']
  }
});

I'm guessing you're trying to do something with your `myPluginFactory` besides creating an object.

If you need to to create an object and do some other stuff, you can bite the bullet and assign it to an arbitrary key (though a factory with side-effects has some code smell, imo). Otherwise, if you just want to activate some arbitrary behavior from your spec, without returning an object, I would just put the code in a plain ol' AMD module. I do this for registering Handlebars templateHelper from my specs:

// templateHelpers/toUpperCase.js
define(['Handlebars', function(Handlebars) {
  Handlebars.registerHelper('toUpperCase', function(str) {
    return str.toUpperCase();
  });
});

// spec.js
define({
  // I'm using the `module` factory,
  // to load (and run) the toUpperCase template helper module.
  toUpperCaseHelper: {
    module: 'templateHelpers/toUpperCase'
  }
});

Note that I'm not accessing the 'toUpperCaseHelper' component at all. But the `module` factory has to be wrapped in an object, so wire doesn't think I"m trying to make a plain-old-js-object called 'module'.