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JavaScript Express Basics (2015) Developing Express Apps Like a Boss Easily Debug Express (and other node apps)

Alex Flores
Alex Flores
7,864 Points
Posted by Alex Flores
Alex Flores
7,864 Points

Question about using libraries and frameworks?

I'm doing the Full Stack JavaScript track and I'm at Express Basic. One thing that I've started thinking to myself is between Express, Node.JS, Angular, CSS frameworks, jQuery, any packages I use on NPM, my project (even if it's a simple portfolio site) is going to be seriously bloated with a lot of code that is mostly not going to be used.

Isn't this going to make whatever I'm working on, drag to a halt?

Is there a way to certain aspects of a library that I want to use? Like Foundation (CSS framework) allows you to download only what you want to use, which is really nice.

1 Answer

Allison Hanna
Allison Hanna
36,222 Points
Allison Hanna
Allison Hanna
36,222 Points

Two answers, ish. One is that yes, you can customize some frameworks to get only what you need, or require only what you need. Like with Bootstrap, you can pick and choose: http://getbootstrap.com/customize/ . And then my second thought is regarding any npm packages you'll require for your project. Your code doesn't really go out with those dependencies, but rather they are merely listed in your package.json file and then when somebody else uses your code they have to install those dependencies themselves. Like if you forked somebody's project on github and cloned it, one of the first things you'd probably do is run npm install on the command line to download the dependencies.

Also, when you require the scripts for bootstrap or jquery, you can do so via a CDN ( like Google's, https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries/) instead of from your own files. That way a user has most likely already got a cached version from visiting other sites, and it won't need to download from your app.

Alex Flores
Alex Flores
7,864 Points
Alex Flores
Alex Flores
7,864 Points

Thanks for the response, Allison. It still fully make sense to me. Once the contributor or whoever downloads the dependencies and let's just assume they only downloaded the production dependencies, that package (including all of the libraries and frameworks) is still part of the overall website package. I guess, you can take advantage of CDN, but don't most of them charge you to use them?