Using Third-Party Libraries

Plugins are able to define libraries for use on the client side through use of the scripts property in plugin.json, but occasionally, you may want to include a dependent script that you did not write. Oftentimes, these scripts are written in AMD-style, and can be used by a module loader such as require.js, but NodeBB is unable to load them because they are not also often defined by name.

You may see errors like this:

Uncaught Error: Mismatched anonymous define() module ...

This is a common error with anonymous modules, as is explained in this help article. In a nutshell, because we minify all javascript files defined in scripts or acpScripts, there is no context left for require.js to determine where a file is in relation to where it is called from.

In NodeBB, you'll want to use the modules property in plugin.json to properly name these modules so they can be referenced and linked properly:

plugin.json

{
    ...
    "modules": {
        "jquery.js": "/path/to/jquery.js"
    },
    ...
}

From your client-side scripts, you can then load the jQuery module via require.js as follows:

require(['jquery'], function ($) {
    $('.someClass').addClass('someotherclass');
});

Keep in mind this is a contrived example, as jQuery is already available globally in NodeBB.