Qooxdoo 7.1 – easy integration of npm packages

The qooxdoo 7.1 release adds support for adding npm packages directly into your qx application and fixes a few bugs along the way.

Qooxdoo provides all the tooling and library functions necessary to develop full-fledged single-page web applications. Nevertheless, there are literally thousands of extension libraries via npm, many of these packages are not node specific and work just fine in the browser.

The 7.1 release adds functionality to the compiler which detects calls to require and grabs the selected packages from your node_modules folder and integrates them into your qooxdoo application.

The compiler creates a bundle containing the required packages including all dependencies, and adds that bundle to the JavaScript code that implements your app.

Using an npm package becomes as simple as installing

$ npm install semver

and then requiering the package in your qooxdoo app

const semver = require(‘semver’)
semver.valid(‘1.2.3’) // ‘1.2.3’
semver.valid(‘a.b.c’) // null
semver.clean(‘ =v1.2.3 ‘) // ‘1.2.3’

Enjoy!