Create standalone npm package(s)

[zol]

It would be fantastic if Blaze had a life of it's own and could be used independently like React. I'm sure there are a lot of details to work out, some of them potentially difficult (e.g dealing with assumptions on globals).

I wonder if it's feasible to create a Webpack loader that loads .blaze.html files.

[rclai]

Someone actually made a spacebars loader plugin for webpack and I've used it briefly:

https://github.com/xamfoo/spacebars-loader

As a matter of fact, if you look at the dependencies of that project you'll find that they depend on a bunch of Meteor internal packages (blaze related in particular) that people have broken out into NPM.

[stubailo]

Ooh, that's awesome!

[mitar]

cc @xamfoo

[rclai]

Also, @murillo128 would you be interested in helping out with this?

[murillo128]

hi all!

In fact we already did that!

https://github.com/eface2face/meteor-client/blob/master/README.md

We have not keep up to date with latest meteor versions mainly because it is working like a charm for us in several production projects.

Shouldn't be much of an issue to update it to latest one.

[murillo128]

Also, as a bonus we created a jQuery plugin (https://github.com/eface2face/jquery-meteor-blaze/blob/master/README.md) for old school guys like me ;)

[mitar]

Would you be interested in bringing this upstream into the official package?

Also, how are you doing HTML files processing?

[murillo128]

With this:
https://github.com/eface2face/jquery-widget-compiler/blob/master/README.md

We are using our "home made web components" based on jQuery widgets (you know, old school). We process the html, parse the html generating the js for each template, and bundling it together.

[murillo128]

And for sure we would be interested to collaborate and get this into the official package

[mitar]

I think that would be a great one way to do it. But also compilation on the server side would be great. Maybe server side should use webpack and client side should use jQuery. That would be an amazing first iteration.

[murillo128]

I don't have any experience/knowledge of webpack, I would have to check what is about.

But either using raw meteor blaze functions, or the plugin, all you need is the js function for the template generated by the spacebar compiler.

But as the spacebar compiler is also an npm package, you can generate it on the server side without issues.

[mitar]

Oh, don't worry. Everyone would contribute what they know. I am just describing broader plan. It seems you @murillo128 have experience with the client side and jQuery, and @xamfoo with webpack. Together we could do something good.

[xamfoo]

I'll love to help!

@murillo128 Thanks for your work on the npm packages.

For a start I'll update my repo and add some tests for the current Blaze version.

I'm curious to see where this is going :)

[mitar]

Any suggestions how to make NPM module which can compile server-side HTML files into something which can then be available on the client side?