Browserify: Uncaught error when requiring js file by path created from string concatenation

Question

I am using browesify for client side app. I have files maps.js and directions.js sitting besides my index.js file, and inside my index.js, I have a function getPageName() which returns the name of the file that I should "require". When I try to do

var pageName = getPageName();
var page;
if (pageName === 'maps') {
    page = require('./maps');
} else if (pageName === 'directions') {
    page = require('./directions');
}

it works fine. But when I instead try to use following trick to minimize my code,

var pageName = getPageName();
var page = require('./' + pageName);

I get error Uncaught Error: Cannot find module './maps' in console log in Chrome. Why does it not work when I use string concatenation but works when I use pass the path explicitly?

Patrick Evans · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-19 23:50:03Z

1

That is a limitation of Browserify and similar type libraries. In order to do the require() the library has to examine the js code as a string, and determine file paths before the code is run. This means file paths have to be static in order for it to be picked up.

https://github.com/substack/node-browserify/issues/377

Browserify can only analyze static requires. It is not in the scope of browserify to handle dynamic requires

answered Jul 19, 2016 at 23:50

Patrick Evans

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