Using gulp-browserify for my React.js modules I'm getting 'require is not defined' in the browser

Question

I'm trying to use gulp-browserify to generate a bundle.js file that can be included to the client's browser and begin rendering React components.

Here is my App.js file:

/** @jsx React.DOM */
var React = require('react');

var App = React.createClass({
  render: function() {
    return <h1>Hello {this.props.name}!</h1>;
  }
});

module.exports = App;

And my package.json:

  "name":"hellosign-gulp",
  "version":"0.1.1",
  "dependencies": {
    "gulp": "3.5.x",
    "gulp-browserify": "0.5.0",
    "reactify": "~0.8.1",
    "react": "^0.10.0",
    "gulp-react": "0.2.x"
  }
}

and my gulpfile

var   gulp = require('gulp'),
  react = require('gulp-react'),
  browserify = require('gulp-browserify');


gulp.task('brow-test', function() {
    // Single entry point to browserify
    gulp.src('./src/App.js', {read: false})
        .pipe(browserify({
          insertGlobals : true,
          transform: ['reactify'],
          extensions: ['.jsx'],
          debug :false.
        }))
        .pipe(gulp.dest('.'))
});

Now when I run 'brow-test' I rename the output file to bundle.js and include it with the HTTP response for the browser. The bundle.js file is quite large so I won't include it here but the browser ends up throwing an error

Uncaught ReferenceError: require is not defined

I have this exact same setup running correctly with the regular version of browserify using these commands

browserify -t reactify -r react -r ./src/App > ../webapp/static/bundle.js

And then I don't get the error. Why is gulp-browserify not creating the require shim correctly?

Answer 1

UPDATE: I wrote a new post on this, using different packaging tools. It also includes an optimized example of browserify: Choosing the correct packaging tool for React JS

To anyone reading this post to get a React JS workflow up and running:

I had a lot of issues getting this to work, and ended up writing a post on it: React JS and a browserify workflow. This is my solution, making sure that you can transform your JSX and handle separate watching of other files.

var gulp = require('gulp');
var source = require('vinyl-source-stream'); // Used to stream bundle for further handling etc.
var browserify = require('browserify');
var watchify = require('watchify');
var reactify = require('reactify'); 
var concat = require('gulp-concat');

gulp.task('browserify', function() {
    var bundler = browserify({
        entries: ['./app/main.js'], // Only need initial file, browserify finds the deps
        transform: [reactify], // We want to convert JSX to normal javascript
        debug: true, // Gives us sourcemapping
        cache: {}, packageCache: {}, fullPaths: true // Requirement of watchify
    });
    var watcher  = watchify(bundler);

    return watcher
    .on('update', function () { // When any files update
        var updateStart = Date.now();
        console.log('Updating!');
        watcher.bundle() // Create new bundle that uses the cache for high performance
        .pipe(source('main.js'))
        // This is where you add uglifying etc.
        .pipe(gulp.dest('./build/'));
        console.log('Updated!', (Date.now() - updateStart) + 'ms');
    })
    .bundle() // Create the initial bundle when starting the task
    .pipe(source('main.js'))
    .pipe(gulp.dest('./build/'));
});

// I added this so that you see how to run two watch tasks
gulp.task('css', function () {
    gulp.watch('styles/**/*.css', function () {
        return gulp.src('styles/**/*.css')
        .pipe(concat('main.css'))
        .pipe(gulp.dest('build/'));
    });
});

// Just running the two tasks
gulp.task('default', ['browserify', 'css']);

To solve the issue of using the React JS DEV-TOOLS in chrome, this is what you have to do in your main.js file:

/** @jsx React.DOM */

var React = require('react');
// Here we put our React instance to the global scope. Make sure you do not put it 
// into production and make sure that you close and open your console if the 
// DEV-TOOLS does not display
window.React = React; 

var App = require('./App.jsx');
React.renderComponent(<App/>, document.body);

I hope this will help you get going!