Introduction

plovr is a local compile daemon for Closure JS and Soy files. It has the Closure Library and Closure Templates bundled with it, so you only need to download a single jar file and point it to your directory full of source code to get started. Once it is up and running, you can point a script tag at plovr that will load your compiled code:

<script src="http://localhost:9810/compile?id=integration-test&mode=ADVANCED"></script>

Newer documentation is available on the plovr web site: http://plovr.com/docs.html.

The web site also includes a live demo: http://plovr.com/demo/.

Requirements

Requires Java 1.6.

Running plovr

First, download the most recent version of plovr from the downloads page.

Next, create a configuration file to tell plovr where your source code is. Currently, config files are written in JSON, and you can view a sample config file in the repository. Although // and /** */ style comments are not strictly allowed in JSON, they are allowed in plovr config files.

There are three important keys in the root object of the JSON config file: id, paths, and inputs:

{
  // This comment is allowed even though it is not valid JSON.
  "id": "integration-test",
  "paths": "testdata",
  "inputs": "testdata/example/main.js"
}

• id is the value that will be used with the query parameter id in the src of the <script> tag. plovr can be instantiated with multiple config files, so each must have a unique value for id.
• paths is a single string literal (or an array of string literals) that identifies files and directories of JS and Soy files that may be used as dependencies in the compilation. Because the Closure Library and Soy are already bundled with plovr, they are already considered dependencies, so they do not need to be included explicitly. The paths parameter is analogous to --path in calcdeps.py.
• inputs is a single string literal (or an array of string literals) that identifies JS files that must be included in the compilation. The inputs parameter is analogous to --input in calcdeps.py.

The complete set of plovr config options can be seen at http://www.plovr.com/options.html.

Once you have created a config file, start plovr by running:

java -jar plovr.jar serve <config-file-1> <config-file-2>

This will start an HTTP server on localhost:9810. To get plovr to do the compilation specified in the config file, load the following in a web browser:

http://localhost:9810/compile?id=ID_FROM_CONFIG_FILE

By default, code will be compiled using SIMPLE_OPTIMIZATIONS, but it is possible to add a mode query parameter to override that setting:

http://localhost:9810/compile?id=ID_FROM_CONFIG_FILE&mode=ADVANCED

The supported values for mode are:

• RAW serves one <script> tag per input with the original content.
• WHITESPACE equivalent to the WHITESPACE_ONLY compilation level.
• SIMPLE equivalent to the SIMPLE_OPTIMIZATIONS compilation level.
• ADVANCED equivalent to the ADVANCED_OPTIMIZATIONS compilation level.

Values for mode are case-insensitive.

Building with plovr

If you just want plovr to write a file, run:

java -jar plovr.jar build <config-file>

and it will do its compilation based on the settings in config-file and print the results to standard out.

Other features of plovr when run in server mode

When the serve argument is passed to plovr to run it as a compiler daemon, there are other URLs that you can visit as well to get information about your compilation.

File Size

To see a breakdown of the compiled size of each file, visit:

http://localhost:9810/size?id=ID_FROM_CONFIG_FILE

Unfortunately, the UI is not that great right now, but it can help identify where code bloat is coming from.

Source Map

To get the source map of the last compilation done by plovr, visit:

http://localhost:9810/sourcemap?id=ID_FROM_CONFIG_FILE

This should make it easier to debug your code with the Closure Inspector.