Creating Ember.js Libraries

Building a Better Ember.js Ecosystem

Created by Gordon L. Hempton / @ghempton

We will encourage you to develop the three great virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris.

Larry Wall, creator of Perl

<3 Libraries

Libraries enable laziness.

Existing Ember.js Libraries

Not Good Enough

Unconventional
Antiquated
Not enough
No one's fault

Almost There

Any day now developing apps for the browser is going to feel like big boy programming.
— Trek Glowacki (@trek) February 25, 2014

Example: Components

Prime candidates for libraries.

Librarification

How do you give components to other people?

The Container

Dependency injection
Layer of indirection (IoC)

Container Resolution

Ember App Kit

Overriding

Container resolution allows for easy customization.

Aside: Technique used by Ember-Data and EPF:


App.PostSerializer = DS.RESTSerializer.extend({});

DRY Things Up

Use a helper instead of component.

Think Outside the Box

Get crazy, use a custom type.

Summary

Use the container
Rely on initializers
Use custom types (sparingly)
Assume no prototype extensions
Libraries need more first-class support

Anti-patterns

Views instead of components
Not using the container
Globals

The (Hopefully Not-Distant) Future

Custom Namespaces
ES6 Modules Everywhere