README.md

bower-installer

Tool for installing bower dependencies that won't include entire repos. Although Bower works great as a light-weight tool to quickly install browser dependencies, it currently does not provide much functionality for installing specific "built" components for the client.

#Bower installs entire repositories

{
  "name" : "test",
  "version": "0.1",
  "dependencies" : {
    "jquery-ui" : "latest"
  }
}

If bower install is run on this configuration file, the entire jquery-ui repository will be pulled down and copied into a components directory. This repository is quite large, when probably only a built js and css file are needed. Bower conveniently provides the bower list --paths command to list the actual main files associated with the components (if the component doesn't define a main, then the whole repository is listed instead).

#Bower Installer Bower installer provides an easy way for the main files to be installed or moved to one or more locations. Simply add to your component.json an install key and path attribute:

{
  "name" : "test",
  "version": "0.1",
  "dependencies" : {
    "jquery-ui" : "latest"
  },
  "install" : {
    "path" : "some/path"
  }
}

Install bower-installer by executing

npm install -g bower-installer

From the terminal in the same directory as your component.json file, enter:

bower-installer

After executing this, jquery.js and jquery-ui.js will exist under some/path relative to the location of your component.json file.

#Overriding main files A lot of registered components for bower do not include component.json configuration. Therefore, bower does not know about any "main files" and therefore, by default bower-installer doesn't know about them either. Bower-installer can override an existing main file path or provide a non-existant one:

{
  "name" : "test",
  "version": "0.1",
  "dependencies" : {
    "jquery-ui" : "latest",
    "requirejs" : "latest"
  },
  "install" : {
    "path" : "some/path",
    "sources" : {
      "requirejs" : "components/requirejs/require.js"
    }
  }
}

If bower installer is run on this configuration, require.js, jquery.js, and jquery-ui.js will all appear under some/path relative to your component.json file.

#Install multiple main files For one reason or another you may want to install multiple files from a single component. You can do this by providing an Array instead of a String inside the sources hash:

{
  "name" : "test",
  "version": "0.1",
  "dependencies" : {
    "jquery-ui" : "latest"
  },
  "install" : {
    "path" : "some/path",
    "sources" : {
      "jquery-ui" : [
        "components/jquery-ui/ui/jquery-ui.js",
        "components/jquery-ui/themes/base/minified/jquery-ui.min.css"
      ]
    }
  }
}