Haxe Modular


Code splitting and hot-reload for Haxe JavaScript applications.

Why?

If you use Haxe for JavaScript, directly or indirectly (React, OpenFl,...), then
you probably want to:

- make your web app load instantly,
- make your HTML5 game load quicker,
- load sections / features / mini-games on-demand.

Haxe has an excellent, compact and optimised JS output, but it's always a single file;
even with good minification / gzip compression it can be a large payload.

*Modular can split gigantic Haxe-JS outputs into load-on-demand features,
without size/speed overhead, and without losing sourcemaps.*

How?

``haxe
import MyClass;
...
load(MyClass).then(function(_) {
var c = new MyClass();
});
`

The approach is to reference one class asynchronously in your code:

- at compile time, the dependency graph of the class is built and one additional JS
file will be emitted (bundling this class and all its dependencies),
- at run time, when the aynchronous reference is evaluated, the additional JS is
loaded (once) automatically.

Where to start?

There are 2 ways to use Haxe Modular, depending on your project/toolchain/goals:

1. standalone Modular; zero dependencies, for any Haxe-JS project,
2. Webpack Haxe Loader;
leverage the famous JS toolchain.

In both cases, it is advisable to read about the technical details:

- How to extract/split whole libraries?
- Using Reflection? Need more granular control of bundling?
- How does on-demand loading work at run time?

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Both solutions:

- use Modular splitting under the hood,
- split automatically using a single hxml build configuration,
- support NPM dependencies,
- allow hot-reloading of code.

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1. Standalone Modular is an easy, drop-in, addition to a regular
Haxe JS build process - it is very lightweight and unobstrusive, and you don't need
to learn Webpack.

Using NPM modules however requires a bit of ceremony: all the NPM dependencies have to
be gathered (manually) in a libs.js which is loaded upfront.

2. Webpack Haxe Loader is a more
powerful setup but you'll have to learn Webpack. Webpack is a complex and large system
offering vast possibilities from the JS ecosystem.

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Q: Where can I get more help? I have questions / issues...

- Join haxe-modular chat on Gitter.im

Q: Is it only for React projects?

- Of course not; anything targeting JavaScript can use it.
- However it does offer React-specific additional features for code hot-reloading.

Q: Is it possible to minify the code?

- Yes, with Standalone Modular you can either minify each script
yourself, or use uglifyjs or closure haxelibs for that:
releasing to production.
- Yes, with Webpack Haxe Loader
it will be taken care of by Webpack as part of the production build minification.

Q: Can I extract a library/package from my code?

- Yes: you can split libraries, but for technical reasons,
extracting a library (e.g. many classes used across the application) has some limitations.

Q: Can I still use the includeFile macro to inject JS code in the output?

- Yes, but only when the code is inserted at the top of the file; this is the
default position when using --macro includeFile('my-lib.js').

Q: Does it support Haxe 4's ES6 output? (-D js-es=6`)

- Yes since 0.12.0