Proof of Concept - JavaScript Library Management

[Joe LeBlanc]

After talking with many members of the Joomla community, I have written a proof-of-concept plugin for managing JavaScript libraries. Rouven has also adapted that work as a proof-of-concept at the platform level. A summary of both efforts and an explanation of the reasoning behind these approaches can be read here:

http://corywebbmedia.com/blog/item/71-javascript-library-management-for-joomla

The goal is to have the plugin as a short-term solution, and have the platform level code ready for Joomla 3.0. This way, by the time Joomla 3.0 rolls around, there would be one centralized way of registering the JavaScript libraries and dependent scripts you want to use. This way, only one copy of the library loads and all of the code depending on it is loaded after.

Please let us know what you think about these solutions.

[tina tina]

Hi,
I have some concerns about the performance. I have some programming
experience using YUI.
There are 'Modules' depend on other Modules. so some time we will
encounter the problem: if one Modules fail to load, the process with
be blocked and Deadlock.

Tina

2012/4/20 Joe LeBlanc <con...@jlleblanc.com>:

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[Joseph LeBlanc]

Hi Tina,

The manager does allow you to designate scripts as being dependent upon a particular library. So for instance, you would load YUI as a library, then load your scripts and tell the library manager that they depend on YUI.

As far as I know though, the scenario you present is one that's already currently a problem with Joomla. To actually get around that problem, you'd need to use the "defer" attribute on script tags, or use something like LABjs or RequireJS to load the scripts from the client side. That would also be an excellent addition to Joomla, IMO.

-Joe