Update February 2016: A more comprehensive article on bundling and exporting Aurelia applications has been published here. This post will remain, but it is encouraged to take a look at the newer post which answers things more clearly and gives examples.
If you’re using the JSPM Package Manager with Aurelia, then this post is for you. There is a lot of uncertainty about bundling an Aurelia application and what deploying to production actually looks like. Until Aurelia comes with a proper bundling solution (the Aurelia CLI has been dropped), then we’re left to scratch our heads and use snippets from blog posts. There is now an official Aurelia bundler released which means we don’t have to glue together bundling solutions anymore.
One of the most important aspects of a web application (besides the application itself) is how configurable it is. Where you define key global pieces of data accessible to whatever part of the application needs them; name, version number, API endpoints, API keys and more.
This is why I created Aurelia Configuration. A simple plugin for the Aurelia Javascript framework that allows you to have a configuration file for your application and then pull out values (with support for temporarily overriding values).
I swear this will be my last Aurelia post for a little while. As the community and use of the framework grows, I thought it would be a great idea to create a repository of handy code snippets for use with the Aurelia Javascript framework.
One of those features is the Value Converters feature where a custom Value Converter can be created to modify values within a View. The repository currently has a few converters for working with dates, a couple for iterating objects and eventually there will be many more.
If you’re a user of Aurelia and you’re writing unit tests, you might have run into some confusion around testing your custom elements, more specifically how you can mock an injected instance of something into a class.
In my case I had a Custom Element which allows me to display a select2 custom select within my application. I was also injecting the Element itself and EventAggregator onto the class using the @inject class decorator.
If you are currently working with the Aurelia Javascript framework, then you would know that every so often given the not-so-beta nature of the framework, a new update comes out for one or more of the framework components.
This article is specifically for Jspm users, updating dependencies in Webpack and RequireJS applications uses Npm instead of Jspm.
If you’re not staying up-to-date for each update, it is possible to fall behind. While you might assume that jspm update would work. Sometimes if you’re updating an older code-base, the newer code can and possibly will break your application using update.
There are tonnes of exciting things happening in the Javascript space in 2015. The two most exciting things for me are React.js by Facebook and Aurelia by Rob Eisenberg (of Durandal fame).
Even though Aurelia still has a few months before it hits beta status, developers will once again be at a crossroads as to what they should choose for their next projects when it nears release.
We already have Angular 1.x while still being supported for a while yet before 2.0 becomes the de-facto choice and people are forced to either upgrade or move on to something else, I don’t like the look of the new syntax nor other decisions made about its design.
Recently in Aurelia I ran into a peculiar issue using the bundled Browser Sync Gulp task for deploying a test server. When visiting a parameterised URL the paths to the System packages would break. It turns out by default the paths are set in a way they will add onto the current URL instead of referencing the root “/” as the base path.
In /config.js where all of the paths are setup, right up the top you will see a few paths set. Mine looks like the following (yours probably does as well):
Update: January 2017
I am using Aurelia, still. I am loving working with it and I find it hard to work with anything else. Aurelia has been stable and has saved me hundreds of hours of time by allowing me to be super efficient.
Update: December 2016
I am still using Aurelia and enjoying it thoroughly. Since writing this article, Aurelia has grown immensely and hit a stable v1 release with constant improvements being made. Such a great framework that I am glad I decided to use.
Things just got real in the front-end framework space. Durandal developer Rob Eisenberg and once upon a time short-term core Angular 2.0 developer has announced a new framework called Aurelia. A beautifully designed full-stack SPA framework with support for ECMAScript 6 syntax right out of the box and some clever design decisions.
Not only does it allow you to build applications using ES6, but it supports all forms of alternative abstraction syntax out of the box like TypeScript, AtScript and even CoffeeScript. Rob has plans to put out migration documentations detailing how to migrate from Angular 1.x, Angular 2.x and of course: Durandal. They are not currently available, but are on the roadmap as can be seen here.