Component package manager for building a better web.

Installation

With node previously installed:

 $ npm install -g component

With node binary on OSX:

 $ (cd /usr/local && \
    curl -L# http://nodejs.org/dist/v0.8.15/node-v0.8.15-darwin-x86.tar.gz \
    | tar -zx --strip 1) \
   && npm install -g component \
   && printf "installed component(1) %s\n" $(component --version)

NOTE: tested with node 0.8.x

Features

• write modular commonjs components
• write components that include their own styles, images, scripts, or any combo
• no registry publishing or account required, uses github repositories
• extensible sub-commands via component-YOURCOMMAND git-style
• component skeleton creation command
• installs dependencies from the command-line or ./component.json
• avoid name squatting through github's naming conventions
• build your components with --standalone to share them with non-component(1) users
• discovery of useful packages is simple with a robust search
• view documentation from the command line
• simple private registry set up (all you need is a file server)
• very fast installs (50 components in ~4.5s)
• very fast search (~300ms)

Links

• List of all available components
• Wiki
• Mailing List
• Google+ Community
• component "spec"
• join #components on freenode
• follow @component_js on twitter
• Building better components tips
• F.A.Q

Screencasts

• Creating web components
• App integration introduction

Articles

• building a date picker component
• original component blog post

Usage

Via --help:

Usage: component <command> [options]

Options:

  -h, --help     output usage information
  -V, --version  output the version number

Commands:

  install [name ...]      install one or more components
  create [dir]            create a component skeleton
  search [query]          search with the given query
  convert <file ...>      convert html files to js modules
  info <name> [prop]      output json component information
  changes <name>          output changelog contents
  wiki                    open the components list wiki page
  build                   build the component
  ls                      list installed components

Installing packages

To install one or more packages, simply pass their github repo names as arguments to component install. Dependencies are resolved and the component contents are downloaded into ./components by default. View component help install for details.

$ component install component/tip

   install : component/tip@master
       dep : component/emitter@master
   install : component/emitter@master
       dep : component/jquery@master
   install : component/jquery@master
     fetch : component/tip:index.js
     fetch : component/tip:tip.css
     fetch : component/tip:tip.html
     fetch : component/emitter:index.js
     fetch : component/jquery:index.js
  complete : component/emitter
  complete : component/jquery
  complete : component/tip

Searching for components

By adding your component to the Components List wiki page it will become automatically available to component-search(1). When invoked with no query all components are displayed, otherwise a filtered search, ordered by the number of github "stars":

$ component search ui

  component/dialog
  url: https://github.com/component/dialog
  desc: Dialog component
  ★ 12

  component/notification
  url: https://github.com/component/notification
  desc: Notification component
  ★ 10

  component/overlay
  url: https://github.com/component/overlay
  desc: Overlay component
  ★ 7

Using GitHub as a registry

By using GitHub as the registry, component(1) is automatically available to you without further explicit knowledge or work creating a registry account etc.

A nice side-effect of this namespaced world is that dependencies are explicit and self-documenting. No longer do you need to query the registry for a "repo" property that may not exist, it's simply built in to the package name, for example "visionmedia/page.js" rather than the unclear "page".

Another benefit of this is that there are zero name collisions, for example you may use "component/tip" for a dependency of "foo", and "someuser/tip" as a dependency of "bar", providing require('tip') in each. This prevents obscure or irrelevant naming such as "progress", "progress2", "progress-bar", "progress-component" found in npm.

Creating a component

The component-create(1) command can create a component project skeleton for you by filling out the prompts. Once this repo is published to GitHub, you're all done!

name: popover
description: Popover UI component
does this component have js? yes
does this component have css? yes
does this component have html? yes

     create : popover
     create : popover/index.js
     create : popover/template.html
     create : popover/popover.css
     create : popover/Makefile
     create : popover/Readme.md
     create : popover/.gitignore
     create : popover/component.json

A Makefile is created for you in order to create a build of the component, complete with installed dependencies simply execute make.

Templates

Because component(1) has no notion of a "template", even simple HTML files should be converted to a require()-able module. It is recommended that public components shared within the community use regular HTML templates, and regular CSS stylesheets to maximize contributions, however if you wish to use alternate technologies just make sure to compile them before publishing them to GitHub.

For the recommended use-case of regular HTML, the component-convert(1) command will translate a regular HTML file to its require()-able JavaScript counterpart.

Developing component(1) sub-commands

component(1) and sub-commands are structured much like git(1), in that sub-commands are simply separate executables. For example $ component info pkg and $ component-info pkg are equivalent.

Because of this you'll likely want PATH="./bin:$PATH" in your profile or session while developing component, otherwise ./bin/component will have a hard time finding the sub-commands.

Using private components

component(1) uses [~/.netrc](http://man.cx/netrc(4), like other tools such as curl and git, to specify credentials for remote hosts. Simply create a ~/.netrc file in the home directory:

machine raw.github.com
  login visionmedia
  password pass123

Running tests

Make sure dependencies are installed:

$ npm install

Then run:

$ make test

Contributors

• TJ Holowaychuk
• Guillermo Rauch
• Garrett Johnson
• Amir Abu Shareb
• Adam Sanderson
• Matt Mueller
• Forbes Lindesay
• Arpad Borsos
• Dan Williams
• Damián Suárez
• Tim Oxley
• Jeremy Worboys
• Nick Jackson
• Cameron Bytheway

Example applications

Open source application examples:

• Example using script tags for integrating component with existing non-commonjs applications or frameworks
• Todo list example comprised of private and public components
• Component.io website
• Posty

Extensions

• component-graph(1) dependency graphs for component projects

License

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2012 TJ Holowaychuk <tj@vision-media.ca>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.