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March 04, 2013

AngularJS Module Seperation needs help

If you're using AngularJS as your framework of choice you probably know that it is recommended that you separate your modules according to Logic (Directives, Filters, Services) of by view type (i.e. dashboard-module) or combine the 2, but the idea is to have a single main module which depends on these "sub" modules.
This is better for testing since you don't need to load them all if you only going to test one of them, and better for keeping you stuff organized.
Currently, if you wish to create a module that, for instance, holds all the Directives, what you need to do is to have a JS file which defines the module and on top of it, it will create all the Directives with the .directive() factory method, and this is where I find the design a bit lacking, since it's really smells bad to have a big (big) file with all you're directives defined in it. no... I want each Directive to live in it's own file.
So this is where it gets uglier. If I want each Directive to be in it's own file, this means I need to load each of these files on my index.html. Now, some of you might say "Hey! use RequireJS to load them up, dummy!" but I know that RequireJS creates a whole new set of issues with the E2E tests... I really don't want RequireJS.
The direction I went with was to go with other script loaders like $script or yepnope and have them define the scripts to load on each module file - on the Directive module I will define all the directive that needs to be loaded. Doesn't work.
In the meantime, if any of you wants to share his/hers idea - I'll appreciate it :)

Cheers.