Easy async for NodeBB on client side

Do you use async library on client side in your plugins?
I do a lot. And I find it quite troublesome to put the library almost in each and every plugin I make. Furthermore, it rather more troublesome then to require the library in a manner like this:

require(['../../plugins/nodebb-plugin-my-long-plugin-name/public/js/vendor/async/dist/async.min'], function (async) {
    //
});

Now imagine if you use the async library in your plugin a, plugin b and plugin c. All of them will require the library from themself. Since all of the plugins have different base urls, RequireJS will make three different HTTP requests.

Gimme a break!

After installing this plugin you will be able to:

require(['async'], function (async) {
    // now you can use the latest stable "async": "^1.5.0"
});

That's it, nothing more, nothing less. I hope it will helps you.

Installation

cd /path/to/nodebb
npm install nodebb-plugin-frontend-async

Or via NodeBB Admin panel.

To get this plugin installed automatically along with your plugin, just specify in your plugin.json

"dependencies": {
    "nodebb-plugin-frontend-async": "^0"
},
"peerDependencies": {
    "nodebb-plugin-frontend-async": "^0"
}

Why both dependencies and peerDependencies? That's because of different behavior in npm v2 and npm v3. You can read more about the issue and the workaround in this blog post

Don't forget to Enable the plugin in the Admin panel after installing. And to instruct your plugin users to do that little extra step!

Information

The plugin:
1. doesn't modify any source of NodeBB
2. gets async.min.js from NodeBB node_modules
3. injects async directly to RequireJS way before DOM is ready