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cajon

Cajon is a JavaScript module loader for the browser that can load CommonJS/node and AMD modules. It is built on top of RequireJS.

You can use it to code modules for your project in CommonJS/node style, then use the RequireJS Optimizer to build all the modules into an AMD-compliant bundle. This allows you to then use a small AMD API shim, like almond, to get nicely optimized code without needing a full runtime loader.

Why?

Why use this instead of RequireJS? Some possible reasons:

  1. You cannot bring yourself to use a wrapper like this around your module code:
define(function(require) {
    /*module code here */
});
  1. You have a set of code already formatted in CommonJS/node style you want to reuse.

Otherwise, you should be using RequireJS, or another AMD loader.

Note the Restrictions section below. You will likely gnash your teeth in frustration if you do not heed them.

If you do not like this particular loader, but like the idea of a dual AMD and CommonJS/node style module loader, then you may like LinkedIn's Inject loader better.

How does it work?

Cajon is constructed with:

  • RequireJS (needs 2.0.2 or later)
  • An override to requirejs.load that fetches scripts via async XHR requests then evals them, using the //@ sourceURL= to specify the script names for script debuggers.

Cajon will only use the XHR+eval approach if the request is to the same domain as the HTML document. If the script request is deemed to be on another domain, it will just delegate to the default requirejs.load() function, where it will load the script with a