steal

In addition to a collection of plugins,StealJSis comprised of two main components:

• steal:an extensible, universal module loader.
• steal-tools:utilities for building, transforming, and exporting module formats.

This is thestealrepository. For thetools,seehttps://github /stealjs/steal-tools.

Module Loading withsteal

stealis unique because it can load JavaScript modules defined in ES6, AMD, and CommonJS formats (unlike most other module loaders, which only support one of these formats at a time).

In JavaScript, the word "modules" refers to small units of independent, reusable code. They are the foundation of many JavaScript design patterns, and can look like this in ES6:

exportfunctionhello(){
console.log('hello');
}
exportfunctiongoodbye(){
console.log('goodbye');
}

Or like this in AMD:

define([],function(){
return{
hello:function(){
console.log('hello');
},
goodbye:function(){
console.log('goodbye');
}
};
});

Or like this CommonJS:

functionhello(){
console.log('hello');
}
functiongoodbye(){
console.log('goodbye');
}
module.exports={
hello:hello,
goodbye:goodbye
}

All of these formats are supported bysteal,so you can mix and match modules in your project:

// ES6
import{hello,goodbye}from"greetings";

// AMD
define(["greetings"],function(greetings){...});

// CommonJS
varhello=require('greetings').hello;
vargoodbye=require('greetings').goodbye;

Additionally, plugins make it possible to load ANY module type you might come up with, such as Less or CSS. Anyone can write a plugin forstealto extend it's core module-loading functionality.

Extendingstealwith Plugins

The StealJS organization maintains popular plugins that extend and enhance the module-loading capabilities ofsteal(and, subsequently,steal-tools) such as:

• CSS
• Less
• Conditional
• Mocha
• QUnit

For example, the Less plugin allows Less files to be loaded similarly to JavaScript modules:

// ES6
import"style.less";

// AMD
define(["style.less"],function(){...});

// CommonJS
require("style.less");

// steal
steal("style.less")

Looking to create a plugin for another format? SeeWriting Plugins.

For more information on StealJS, visitStealJS.

Contributing

For information on contributing and developing, see theContributing Guide on StealJS.