How to use third party npm packages with ember cli

Question

EDIT: this is actually about any npm package which is not designed to play along with ember. In my case, I tried to make crypto-js work, but it seems to be always the same trouble with any npm package not specially designed for ember cli.

I want to use cryptoJS in my ember app, which I'm currently refactoring with ember cli, but I'm having a lot of trouble importing all the third party packages and libraries I'm already using, like for example cryptoJS.

CryptoJS at least has a package for npm, I don't even want to think about what happens if some of my included libraries don't have a package...

Am I just missing the point in the documentation of ember-cli or is it really not described how to import other npm packages and also how to inlcude non-package libraries properly to keep them under version control and dependency control?

If I follow the description of the crypto-js package manual:

var CryptoJS = require("crypto-js");
console.log(CryptoJS.HmacSHA1("Message", "Key"));

I get and error in my ember build

utils/customauthorizer.js: line 1, col 16, 'require' is not defined.

Thanks for any help on this, I'm very excited about the ember cli project, but importing my existing ember app has been quite painful so far...

EDIT:

Just importing unfortunately does not work.

import CryptoJS from 'crypto-js';

throws during the build

daily@dev1:~/VMD$ ember build
version: 0.1.2
Build failed.
File: vmd/utils/customauthorizer.js
ENOENT, no such file or directory '/home/daily/VMD/tmp/tree_merger-tmp_dest_dir-F7mfDQyP.tmp/crypto-js.js'
Error: ENOENT, no such file or directory '/home/daily/VMD/tmp/tree_merger-tmp_dest_dir-F7mfDQyP.tmp/crypto-js.js'
    at Error (native)
    at Object.fs.statSync (fs.js:721:18)
    at addModule (/home/daily/VMD/node_modules/ember-cli/node_modules/broccoli-es6-concatenator/index.js:84:46)
    at addModule (/home/daily/VMD/node_modules/ember-cli/node_modules/broccoli-es6-concatenator/index.js:133:9)
    at addModule (/home/daily/VMD/node_modules/ember-cli/node_modules/broccoli-es6-concatenator/index.js:133:9)
    at /home/daily/VMD/node_modules/ember-cli/node_modules/broccoli-es6-concatenator/index.js:59:7
    at $$$internal$$tryCatch (/home/daily/VMD/node_modules/ember-cli/node_modules/rsvp/dist/rsvp.js:470:16)
    at $$$internal$$invokeCallback (/home/daily/VMD/node_modules/ember-cli/node_modules/rsvp/dist/rsvp.js:482:17)
    at $$$internal$$publish (/home/daily/VMD/node_modules/ember-cli/node_modules/rsvp/dist/rsvp.js:453:11)
    at $$rsvp$asap$$flush (/home/daily/VMD/node_modules/ember-cli/node_modules/rsvp/dist/rsvp.js:1531:9)

Answer 1

UPDATE: I got this to work much better and straight forward! Thanks to the comment of @j_mcnally!

Will leave the first answer down there so everyone can see what trouble I was coming from :)

What I did:

bower install crypto-js=svn+http://crypto-js.googlecode.com/svn/#~3.1.2 --save

In my file Brocfile.js I could just do app.import('bower_components/crypto-js/build/rollups/hmac-md5.js');

No manual downloading or moving files, just managing a dependency, much better solution!

But honestly, it was still a lot of vodoo! Until I found the documentation... sweet: http://bower.io/docs/api/#install

---

OLD approach

I got this to work, but I can not tell how pretty or correct that approach is. Including third party packages or libraries with ember cli is pretty far away from straight forward or self explaining.

The ressources which led me to my working solution were:

• how to use third party javascript from ember-cli route
• https://github.com/stefanpenner/ember-cli/issues/757

The following steps I took to get it working:

• I manually downloaded the library https://code.google.com/p/crypto-js/downloads/detail?name=CryptoJS%20v3.1.2.zip and unziped it
• I manually created a directory in my vendor directory: mkdir vendor/crypto-js
• I appended app.import('vendor/crypto-js/hmac-md5.js'); to the Brocfile.js file
• I added "CryptoJS" to the "predef" key in the .jshintrc file

Then the build worked and I could eventually use the library.

Sadly I didn't get the npm package to work! I had to manually download the zip file, unzip it and move it to the correct location and if the version changes, it's not under any version/dependency control... I will not mark this as an answer, since it does not satisfy me at all, but at least I wanted to share what I did to make it work for me.

Answer 2

As Timm describes, using browserify gets the code injected into your ember app. However, I was having trouble actually using the injected module. In order to do that I had to actually create the module with New before I could use it:

In order to import an NPM module.

1) install browserify:

npm install ember-browserify --save-dev

2) install your modele:

npm install my-module --save-dev

3) Import your module into your ember file of interest (app/controller/post.js):

import Module from 'npm:my-module';

4) use the module from within your code by creating the module with New:

var output = new Module(var1, var2, etc.);

Answer 3

The easiest and recommended answer is to use ember-browserify. (as support for bower packages will be removed in the future.)

This is an example for using the npm package dexie within an Ember CLI app.

Install browserify: npm install ember-browserify --save-dev

Install dexie (or whatever module you need): npm install dexie --save-dev

Import the module like this: import Dexie from 'npm:dexie';

Answer 4

As stated by Pablo Morra on a comment of the simplabs' post "Using npm libraries in Ember CLI", third party npm modules can be imported on Ember.js from version 2.15 directly without the need of addons or wrappers:

https://www.emberjs.com/blog/2017/09/01/ember-2-15-released.html#toc_app-import-files-within-node_modules

Unfortunately documentation is still on work and it doesn't say that npm modules can be imported, only bower and vendor ones:

https://github.com/emberjs/guides/issues/2017 https://guides.emberjs.com/v3.0.0/addons-and-dependencies/managing-dependencies/

I've gotten 2 solutions to import third party npm modules directly on Ember.js from the Ember CLI documentation about managing dependencies, although it's also out-of-date and says that npm modules can't be imported, only bower and vendor ones:

npm module as Standard Anonymous AMD Asset

https://ember-cli.com/managing-dependencies#standard-anonymous-amd-asset

AMD: Asynchronous Module Definition

I prefer and use this way because it avoids global variables and follows the import convention of Ember.js.

ember-cli-build.js:

app.import('node_modules/ic-ajax/dist/amd/main.js', {
  using: [
    { transformation: 'amd', as: 'ic-ajax' }
  ]
});

amd is the type of transformation applied, and ic-ajax is the module name to be used when it's imported on a javascript file.

on Ember.js javascript file (router, component...):

import raw from 'ic-ajax';
// ...
icAjaxRaw( /* ... */ );

raw is a module exported by ic-ajax.

That's the way it worked for me although the Ember CLI documentation shows the import other way that didn't work for me, maybe because of the specific package I was importing:

import { raw as icAjaxRaw } from 'ic-ajax';
//...
icAjaxRaw( /* ... */ );

npm module as global variable

https://ember-cli.com/managing-dependencies#standard-non-amd-asset

ember-cli-build.js:

app.import('node_modules/moment/moment.js');

on Ember.js javascript file (router, component...):

/* global moment */
// No import for moment, it's a global called `moment`

// ...
var day = moment('Dec 25, 1995');

/* global moment */ is an annotation for ESLint not to show an error when building the project because moment() is not defined in the file.

npm module as Standard Named AMD Asset

https://ember-cli.com/managing-dependencies#standard-named-amd-asset

Ember CLI also shows a third option that didn't work for me, maybe because of the specific package I was importing:

ember-cli-build.js:

app.import('node_modules/ic-ajax/dist/named-amd/main.js');

on Ember.js javascript file (router, component...):

import { raw as icAjaxRaw } from 'ic-ajax';
//...
icAjaxRaw( /* ... */ );

npm module as AMD JavaScript modules

https://guides.emberjs.com/v3.0.0/addons-and-dependencies/managing-dependencies/#toc_amd-javascript-modules

The way described on Ember.js documentation about Managing Dependencies didn't work for me either, maybe because of the specific package I was importing:

ember-cli-build.js:

app.import('node_modules/ic-ajax/dist/named-amd/main.js', {
  exports: {
    'ic-ajax': [
      'default',
      'defineFixture',
      'lookupFixture',
      'raw',
      'request'
    ]
  }
});

on Ember.js javascript file (router, component...):

import { raw as icAjaxRaw } from 'ic-ajax';
//...
icAjaxRaw( /* ... */ );

Answer 5

even though this is an old thread thought I would contribute as I spent a while doing this. The specific package I was trying to link to ember was 'd3plus' and had to do a variety of things to get it to work.

1. npm install ember-browserify --save-dev
2. npm install d3plus --save-dev
3. ember install ember-cli-coffeescript
4. npm install --save-dev coffeeify coffeescript

then in your component do import d3plus from 'npm:d3plus';

For a long time I was getting runtime errors when it was searching for the coffescript and figured this would be helpful for people specifically looking for d3plus.