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Asset compilation


When working on an Ember app, sometimes you may want to customize how certain kinds of assets are handled. This is referred to as "asset compilation."

For information on stylesheets, please see the dedicated section, Stylesheet compilation

Raw Assets

To include images, fonts, or other assets, place them in the public/assets directory.

For example, if you place logo.png in public/assets/images, you can reference it in templates with assets/images/logo.png or in stylesheets with url('/assets/images/logo.png').

In production builds, these assets are fingerprinted, but all references are also automatically updated. This functionality comes from broccoli-asset-rev. Be sure to check out all the options and usage notes.

JS transpiling

Ember CLI automatically transpiles future JavaScript (ES6/ES2015, ES2016 and beyond) into standard ES5 JavaScript that runs on every browser using Babel JS with the Ember CLI Babel addon.

Internally, Ember CLI Babel uses babel-preset-env, which figures out which parts of your code need to be transpiled to ES5 by analyzing your project's browser support targets. A target is a special keyword that maps to a browserlist support rule. These are defined in your config/targets.js file, which Ember CLI generates like so:

'use strict';

const browsers = [
  'last 1 Chrome versions',
  'last 1 Firefox versions',
  'last 1 Safari versions'
];

const isCI = !!process.env.CI;
const isProduction = process.env.EMBER_ENV === 'production';

if (isCI || isProduction) {
  browsers.push('ie 11');
}

module.exports = {
  browsers
};

(If these values look familiar, they're the same exact values used by the popular Autoprefixer project.)

If you need more fine-grained customization over the way that babel-preset-env transforms your code, simply set any of the options found here on your application's babel hash in ember-cli-build.js.

For example, if you wanted to explicitly exclude generator function transpilation from your output, your configuration would look like this:

/* eslint-env node */
'use strict';
const EmberApp = require('ember-cli/lib/broccoli/ember-app');

module.exports = function(defaults) {
  let app = new EmberApp(defaults, {
    babel: {
      blacklist: [
        'es6.arrowFunctions',
        'es6.blockScoping',
        'es6.classes',
        'es6.destructuring',
        'es6.parameters',
        'es6.properties.computed',
        // ...more options
      ]
    }
  });

  //...
  return app.toTree();
};

As of Version 2.13, Ember CLI uses Babel 6.X for transpilation. Ember CLI versions prior to 2.13 use Babel Babel 5.X, and you can check its documentation for a comprehensive list of all available transformations and options.

Source maps

Ember CLI supports producing source maps for your concatenated and minified JS source files.

Source maps are configured by the EmberApp sourcemaps option, and are disabled in production by default. Pass sourcemaps: {enabled: true} to your EmberApp constructor to enable source maps for JavaScript. Use the extensions option to add other formats, such as CSS: {extensions: ['js', 'css']}. JS is supported out-of-the-box. CSS is not currently supported. For other source formats, refer to their addons.

Default ember-cli-build.js:

'use strict';

const EmberApp = require('ember-cli/lib/broccoli/ember-app');

module.exports = function(defaults) {
  let app = new EmberApp(defaults, {
    // Add options here
  });

  // Use `app.import` to add additional libraries to the generated...

  return app.toTree();
};
};

Minifying

Compiled css-files are minified by broccoli-clean-css or broccoli-csso, if it is installed locally. You can pass minifer-specific options to them using the minifyCSS:options object in your ember-cli-build. Minification is enabled by default in the production-env and can be disabled using the minifyCSS:enabled switch.

Similarly, the js-files are minified with ember-cli-uglify in the production environment by default. You can pass custom options to the minifier via the ember-cli-uglify:options object in your ember-cli-build. To enable or disable JS minification you may supply a boolean value for ember-cli-uglify:enabled.

For example, to disable minifying of CSS and JS, add in ember-cli-build.js:

const EmberApp = require('ember-cli/lib/broccoli/ember-app');

module.exports = function(defaults) {
  let app = new EmberApp(defaults, {
    'ember-cli-uglify': {
      enabled: false
    },
    minifyCSS: {
      enabled: false
    }
  });

  //...
  return app.toTree();
};

More details on available options to customize JavaScript minification can be found in ember-cli-uglify docs.

Note: The option object for minifying of JavaScript files was renamed in ember-cli-uglify@2.x, which is part of Ember CLI's default blueprint since 2.16.0. The option was called minifyJS for ember-cli-uglify@1.x.

Exclude from minification

Some files should be excluded from minification, such as copied-and-pasted third-party scripts that are already minified.

To exclude assets from dist/assets from being minified, one can pass options for broccoli-uglify-sourcemap like so:

const EmberApp = require('ember-cli/lib/broccoli/ember-app');

module.exports = function(defaults) {
  let app = new EmberApp(defaults, {
    minifyJS: {
      options: {
        exclude: ["**/vendor.js"]
      }
    }
  });

  //...
  return app.toTree();
};

This would exclude the resulting vendor.js file from being minified.

Fingerprinting and CDN URLs

Fingerprinting is done using the addon broccoli-asset-rev (which is included by default).

When the environment is production (e.g. ember build --environment=production), the addon will automatically fingerprint your JS, CSS, PNG, JPG, and GIF assets by appending a md5 checksum to the end of their filename (e.g. assets/yourapp-9c2cbd818d09a4a742406c6cb8219b3b.js). In addition, your HTML, JS, and CSS files will be re-written to include the new name. There are a few options you can pass into EmberApp in your ember-cli-build.js to customize this behavior.

  • enabled - Default: app.env === 'production' - Boolean. Enables fingerprinting if true. True by default if current environment is production.
  • exclude - Default: [] - An array of strings. If a filename contains any item in the exclude array, it will not be fingerprinted.
  • ignore - Default: [] - An array of strings. If a filename contains any item in the ignore array, the contents of the file will not be processed for fingerprinting.
  • extensions - Default: ['js', 'css', 'png', 'jpg', 'gif', 'map'] - The file types to add md5 checksums.
  • prepend - Default: '' - A string to prepend to all of the assets. Useful for CDN URLs like https://subdomain.cloudfront.net/
  • replaceExtensions - Default: ['html', 'css', 'js'] - The file types to replace source code with new checksum file names.
  • customHash - When specified, this is appended to fingerprinted filenames instead of the md5. Pass null to suppress the hash, which can be useful when using prepend.

As an example, this ember-cli-build will exclude any file in the fonts/169929 directory as well as add a CloudFront domain to each fingerprinted asset.

const EmberApp = require('ember-cli/lib/broccoli/ember-app');

module.exports = function(defaults) {
  let app = new EmberApp({
    fingerprint: {
      exclude: ['fonts/169929'],
      prepend: 'https://subdomain.cloudfront.net/'
    }
  });

  //...
  return app.toTree();
};

The end result will turn

<script src="assets/appname.js">
background: url('/images/foo.png');

into

<script src="https://subdomain.cloudfront.net/assets/appname-342b0f87ea609e6d349c7925d86bd597.js">
background: url('https://subdomain.cloudfront.net/images/foo-735d6c098496507e26bb40ecc8c1394d.png');

You can disable fingerprinting in your ember-cli-build.js:

const EmberApp = require('ember-cli/lib/broccoli/ember-app');

module.exports = function(defaults) {
  let app = new EmberApp({
    fingerprint: {
      enabled: false
    }
  });

  //...
  return app.toTree();
};

Or remove the entry from your EmberApp and broccoli-asset-rev from your package.json.

Application configuration

Application configurations from your ember-cli-build.js file will be stored inside a special meta tag in dist/index.html.

sample meta tag:

<meta name="user/config/environment" content="%7B%22modulePre.your.config">

This meta tag is required for your Ember application to function properly.

If you prefer to have this tag be part of your compiled JavaScript files instead, you may use the storeConfigInMeta flag in ember-cli-build.js.

const EmberApp = require('ember-cli/lib/broccoli/ember-app');

module.exports = function(defaults) {
  let app = new EmberApp({
    storeConfigInMeta: false
  });

  //...
  return app.toTree();
};

Configuring output paths

The compiled files are output to the following paths:

Assets Output File
app/index.html index.html
app/**/*.js /assets/application-name.js
app/styles/app.css /assets/application-name.css
app/styles/**/*.css /assets/application-name.css
JavaScript files you import with app.import /assets/vendor-156ded12485a2e7e39283329d1ef334b.js
CSS files you import with app.import /assets/vendor-eb3bda7909867b10ae3970713be0bc49.css

To change these paths, specify the outputPaths config option in ember-cli-build.js. The default setting is shown here:

const EmberApp = require('ember-cli/lib/broccoli/ember-app');

module.exports = function(defaults) {
  let app = new EmberApp({
    outputPaths: {
      app: {
        html: 'index.html',
        css: {
          'app': '/assets/application-name.css'
        },
        js: '/assets/application-name.js'
      },
      vendor: {
        css: '/assets/vendor-eb3bda7909867b10ae3970713be0bc49.css',
        js: '/assets/vendor-156ded12485a2e7e39283329d1ef334b.js'
      }
    }
  });

  //...
  return app.toTree();
};

You may edit any of these output paths, but make sure to update the paths specified in your app.outputPaths.app.html default it is index.html, and tests/index.html. If this is not done, your app will not be served with correct asset names.

const EmberApp = require('ember-cli/lib/broccoli/ember-app');

module.exports = function(defaults) {
  let app = new EmberApp({
    outputPaths: {
      app: {
        js: '/assets/main.js'
      }
    }
  });

  //...
  return app.toTree();
};

The outputPaths.app.css option uses a key-value relationship. The key is the input file and the value is the output location. Note that we do not include the extension for the input path, because each preprocessor has a different extension.

When using CSS preprocessing, only the app/styles/app.scss (or .less etc) is compiled. If you need to process multiple files, you must add another key:

const EmberApp = require('ember-cli/lib/broccoli/ember-app');

module.exports = function(defaults) {
  let app = new EmberApp({
    outputPaths: {
      app: {
        css: {
          'app': '/assets/application-name.css',
          'themes/alpha': '/assets/themes/alpha.css'
        }
      }
    }
  });

  //...
  return app.toTree();
};

Integration

When using Ember inside another project, you may want to launch Ember only when a specific route is accessed. If you're preloading the Ember JavaScript before you access the route, you have to disable autoRun:

const EmberApp = require('ember-cli/lib/broccoli/ember-app');

module.exports = function(defaults) {
  let app = new EmberApp({
    autoRun: false
  });

  //...
  return app.toTree();
};

To manually run Ember: require("app-name/app")["default"].create({/* app settings */});

Subresource integrity

SRI calculation is done using the addon ember-cli-sri (which is included by default).

This plugin is used to generate SRI integrity for your applications. Subresource integrity is a security concept used to check JavaScript and stylesheets are loaded with the correct content when using a CDN.

Why

The reason to add this to your application is to protect against poisoned CDNs breaking JavaScript or CSS.

Customize

To customize SRI generation see: ember-cli-sri