Node-style require for in-browser javascript?

Check out ender. It does a lot of this.

Also, browserify is pretty good. I've used require-kiss¹ and it works. There are probably others.

I'm not sure about RequireJS. It's just not the same as node's. You may run into problems with loading from other locations, but it might work. As long as there's a provide method or something that can be called.

TL;DR- I'd recommend browserify or require-kiss.

Update:

1: require-kiss is now dead, and the author has removed it. I've since been using RequireJS without problems. The author of require-kiss wrote pakmanager and pakman. Full disclosure, I work with the developer.

Personally I like RequireJS better. It is much easier to debug (you can have separate files in development, and a single deployed file in production) and is built on a solid "standard".


I wrote a small script which allows asynchronous and synchronous loading of Javascript files, which might be of some use here. It has no dependencies and is compatible to Node.js & CommonJS. The installation is pretty easy:

$ npm install --save @tarp/require

Then just add the following lines to your HTML to load the main-module:

<script src="/node_modules/@tarp/require/require.min.js"></script>
<script>Tarp.require({main: "./scripts/main"});</script>

Inside your main-module (and any sub-module, of course) you can use require() as you know it from CommonJS/NodeJS. The complete docs and the code can be found on GitHub.


I realize there may be beginners looking to organize their code. This is 2022, and if you're considering a modular JS app, you should get started with npm and Webpack right now.

Here are a few simple steps to get started:

  1. In your project root, run npm init -y to initialize an npm project
  2. Download the Webpack module bundler: npm install webpack webpack-cli
  3. Create an index.html file:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="ie=edge">
    <title>App</title>
</head>
<body>
    
    <script src="_bundle.js"></script>
</body>
</html>

Pay special attention to _bundle.js file - this will be a final JS file generated by webpack, you will not modify it directly (keep reading).

  1. Create a <project-root>/app.js in which you will import other modules:
const printHello = require('./print-hello');

printHello();
  1. Create a sample print-hello.js module:
module.exports = function() {
    console.log('Hello World!');
}
  1. Create a <project-root>/webpack.config.js and copy-paste the following:
var path = require('path');

module.exports = {
  entry: './app.js',
  output: {
    path: path.resolve(__dirname),
    filename: '_bundle.js'
  }
};

In the code above, there are 2 points:

  • entry app.js is where you will write your JS code. It will import other modules as shown above.
  • output _bundle.js is your final bundle generated by webpack. This is what your html will see at the end.
  1. Open your package.json, and replace scripts with the following command:
  "scripts": {
    "start": "webpack --mode production -w"
  },
  1. And finally run the script watch app.js and generate the _bundle.js file by running: npm start.
  2. Enjoy coding!

A variation of Ilya Kharlamov great answer, with some code to make it play nice with chrome developer tools.

//
///- REQUIRE FN
// equivalent to require from node.js
function require(url){
    if (url.toLowerCase().substr(-3)!=='.js') url+='.js'; // to allow loading without js suffix;
    if (!require.cache) require.cache=[]; //init cache
    var exports=require.cache[url]; //get from cache
    if (!exports) { //not cached
            try {
                exports={};
                var X=new XMLHttpRequest();
                X.open("GET", url, 0); // sync
                X.send();
                if (X.status && X.status !== 200)  throw new Error(X.statusText);
                var source = X.responseText;
                // fix (if saved form for Chrome Dev Tools)
                if (source.substr(0,10)==="(function("){ 
                    var moduleStart = source.indexOf('{');
                    var moduleEnd = source.lastIndexOf('})');
                    var CDTcomment = source.indexOf('//@ ');
                    if (CDTcomment>-1 && CDTcomment<moduleStart+6) moduleStart = source.indexOf('\n',CDTcomment);
                    source = source.slice(moduleStart+1,moduleEnd-1); 
                } 
                // fix, add comment to show source on Chrome Dev Tools
                source="//@ sourceURL="+window.location.origin+url+"\n" + source;
                //------
                var module = { id: url, uri: url, exports:exports }; //according to node.js modules 
                var anonFn = new Function("require", "exports", "module", source); //create a Fn with module code, and 3 params: require, exports & module
                anonFn(require, exports, module); // call the Fn, Execute the module
                require.cache[url]  = exports = module.exports; //cache obj exported by module
            } catch (err) {
                throw new Error("Error loading module "+url+": "+err);
            }
    }
    return exports; //require returns object exported by module
}
///- END REQUIRE FN

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