Minifying RequireJS Javascript codebase to a single file

Question

I am new to RequireJS and maybe this is an already discussed issue but I could not find a clear answer or opinion about this.

I have an application working with RequireJS. It has a lot of JavaScript files loaded by Require as they are needed. Working as expected.

Looking to Fiddler inspector I could see that all the files were loaded when the application started. I believe that Require has made a deep traversal of all the references to JavaScript files and loaded them all in the beginning.

If this is the way it works I believe that it would be better to generate a single file, minify it, and load it using a <script> html tag.

If I generate one single file with all scripts, and pre-load them with <script> will RequireJS load them again?

Am I doing something wrong?

In a production environment what could be the better solution?

Thanks in advance.

Please do not use excessive ??? as it may leave an unprofessional feeling of your question and may discourage people to answer for you. Keep strictly in facts. — Mikko Ohtamaa
– Mikko Ohtamaa, Commented Jan 15, 2013 at 13:06
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– Terry Slack, Commented Mar 6, 2017 at 23:54

Chris Salzberg · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-15 13:13:39Z

17

What you want is the RequireJS Optimizer.

The optimizer does the following (from the docs):

Combines related scripts together into build layers and minifies them via UglifyJS (the default) or Closure Compiler (an option when using Java).
Optimizes CSS by inlining CSS files referenced by @import and removing comments.

Here's one article on the topic for further reference.

Have a look also at r.js, the command line tool which includes the optimizer. Using r.js, you can generate an optimized build from an application file main.js with just:

node r.js -o build.js

where build.js is a requirejs config file containing your build profile (baseUrl, paths, etc.).

edited Jan 15, 2013 at 13:13

answered Jan 15, 2013 at 13:03

Chris Salzberg

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2 Comments

mvbaffa Over a year ago

It means that I will need node. I will install nodejs and check it out. Thanks

ddotsenko Over a year ago

If you project is on the simple side, also take a look at prunejs.com

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