Even though this module is intended for use with browserify, nothing about it is
particularly specific to browserify so it should be generally useful in other
projects.

example#

for a main.js:

var fs = require('fs');
var html = fs.readFileSync(__dirname + '/robot.html', 'utf8');
console.log(html);

and a robot.html:

<b>beep boop</b>

first npm install brfs into your project, then:

on the command-line#

$ browserify -t brfs example/main.js > bundle.js

now in the bundle output file,

var html = fs.readFileSync(__dirname + '/robot.html', 'utf8');

turns into:

var html = "<b>beep boop</b>\n";

or with the api#

var browserify = require('browserify');
var fs = require('fs');

var b = browserify('example/main.js');
b.transform('brfs');

b.bundle().pipe(fs.createWriteStream('bundle.js'));

async#

You can also use fs.readFile():

var fs = require('fs');
fs.readFile(__dirname + '/robot.html', 'utf8', function (err, html) {
    console.log(html);
});

When you run this code through brfs, it turns into:

var fs = require('fs');
process.nextTick(function () {(function (err, html) {
    console.log(html);
})(null,"<b>beep boop</b>\n")});

methods#

brfs looks for:

fs.readFileSync(pathExpr, enc=null)
fs.readFile(pathExpr, enc=null, cb)
fs.readdirSync(pathExpr)
fs.readdir(pathExpr, cb)

Inside of each pathExpr, you can use
statically analyzable expressions and
these variables and functions:

__dirname
__filename
path if you var path = require('path') first
require.resolve()

Just like node, the default encoding is null and will give back a Buffer.
If you want differently-encoded file contents for your inline content you can
set enc to 'utf8', 'base64', or 'hex'.

In async mode when a callback cb is given, the contents of pathExpr are
inlined into the source inside of a process.nextTick() call.

When you use a 'file'-event aware watcher such as
watchify, the inlined assets will be
updated automatically.

If you want to use this plugin directly, not through browserify, the api
follows.

var brfs = require('brfs')

var tr = brfs(file, opts)#

Return a through stream tr inlining fs.readFileSync() file contents
in-place.

Optionally, you can set which opts.vars will be used in the
static argument evaluation
in addition to __dirname and __filename.

opts.parserOpts can be used to configure the parser brfs uses,
acorn.

events#

tr.on('file', function (file) {})#

For every file included with fs.readFileSync() or fs.readFile(), the tr
instance emits a 'file' event with the file path.

usage#

A tiny command-line program ships with this module to make debugging easier.

usage:

  brfs file

    Inline `fs.readFileSync()` calls from `file`, printing the transformed file
    contents to stdout.

  brfs
  brfs -

    Inline `fs.readFileSync()` calls from stdin, printing the transformed file
    contents to stdout.

install#

With npm do:

npm install brfs

then use -t brfs with the browserify command or use .transform('brfs') from
the browserify api.

gotchas#

Since brfs evaluates your source code statically, you can't use dynamic expressions that need to be evaluated at run time. For example:

// WILL NOT WORK!
var file = window.someFilePath;
var str = require('fs').readFileSync(file, 'utf8');

Instead, you must use simpler expressions that can be resolved at build-time:

var str = require('fs').readFileSync(__dirname + '/file.txt', 'utf8');

Another gotcha: brfs does not yet support ES module import statements. See brfs-babel for an experimental replacement that supports this syntax.

license#

MIT