d3 and topojson missing from package.json dependencies

[max-mapper]

I tried to browserify planetary.js, but it complained

Error: Cannot find module 'd3' from 'planetary.js/dist'

because of this line:https://github.com/BinaryMuse/planetary.js/blob/master/dist/planetaryjs.js#L11

I think you just need to npm install --save d3 topojson

[BinaryMuse]

Hey, @maxogden,

I did indeed forget to add those to the package.json--I'll get that fixed. That said, I had a hard time getting Planetary.js to play well with browserify.

With the dependencies installed, creating a bundle from a main.js of

var planetaryjs = require('planetary.js');

with

$ ./node_modules/.bin/browserify -t brfs main.js > bundle.js

results in the following exception when used in the browser:

Uncaught TypeError: Object #<Object> has no method 'readFileSync'

It's down in TopoJSON's main, at

var topojson = module.exports = new Function("topojson", "return " + fs.readFileSync(__dirname + "/topojson.js", "utf8"))();

Do I just fail at brfs or is something funky up with that line of code that brfs can't detect?

[max-mapper]

ah, interesting. this creates a valid bundle for me: browserify -r topojson -t brfs, so maybe browserify transforms don't apply to dependencies?

cc @substack

[max-mapper]

w00t, when I added

  "browserify": {
      "transform": ["brfs"]
  },

to the topojson package.json then I could do

browserify -r planetary.js

and it created a working bundle

I wonder if theres a way to do it without modifying topojson?

[BinaryMuse]

Yes, you're right. Help even says

--transform, -t  Use a transform module on top-level files.

You can ensure that the brfs transform runs globally with

./node_modules/.bin/browserify --g brfs main.js > bundle.js

[BinaryMuse]

So one solution is to document the browserify command necessary to create the bundle. Right now the AMD/CommonJS info is in the FAQ; I'm going to move it into one of the first core documentation sections so it's more visible.

Transforming D3 with brfs does make the build considerably slower (only a few seconds, but it's 3-4x slower), so perhaps a better solution would be to see if Mike would be willing to accept a pull request for the browserify portion of TopoJSON's package.json.

I suppose it's also possible @substack would weigh in with something awesome that we haven't considered.

[max-mapper]

talking w/ substack in IRC now

I have made https://github.com/maxogden/topojson/commit/bb1d7959f689a45ad129de061c7f012a58c4ad6d which solves the problem, but substack thinks topojson can be changed to remove the need for brfs in the first place

[BinaryMuse]

The dependencies in package.json landed in 05313d79f8f531a4a8cd91c2ca9633e4556e3cd6 and the installation instructions have been updated to use the workarounds above with a note that the process is likely to change; if and when TopoJSON is updated, I'll update the dependency to point to that version and change the instructions.