request: make gray-matter natively, backwards-compatible with older browsers

[tech4him1]

gray-matter uses features of Node that are not supported in all browsers (e.g. let, const, fs module). This is a big downside, as the entire gray-matter module must be run through something like Babel to work. Even then, it would fail while importing the fs module. Would you consider supporting this, maybe with a pre-built version of gray-matter that can be used on the web?

[jonschlinkert]

Hi, gray-matter is after all a node.js module. I might consider dropping let, const etc. in favor of var, I typically do that anyway. But given that it's a big edge case to use this library in the browser without some kind of pre-processing with webpack or browserify, and there are solutions for importing fs using plugins with those libraries, I'm struggling to see how it makes sense to drop fs from this library for this specific edge case.

What is the reason for using gray-matter in the browser?

[tech4him1]

@jonschlinkert The actual project that we are using it for is Netlify CMS. You had suggested that we switch back to gray-matter after the improvments that you made in v3.0.0. Since it is all in-browser, just using APIs to load the files, it needs to be able to parse the front-matter in-browser as well. There are solutions for working around those limitations, I was mostly wondering if you were willing to keep this module browser-compatible, or whether you didn't really care about browser-compatibility at all (since it is a node module).

[tech4him1]

You also make a good point about the fs module, if WebPack or Browserify is not used, all of the require calls would fail anyway.

[jonschlinkert]

I was mostly wondering if you were willing to keep this module browser-compatible, or whether you didn't really care about browser-compatibility at all (since it is a node module).

I care if it's a use case consistent with why we created the module, which was to support static site generators. I think your use case is consistent with that. I can start by reverting to var then we can go from there. sound ok?

[tech4him1]

@jonschlinkert That sounds good. Just as long as the module in general stays browser-compatible and doesn't use any Node-specific things, that will be awesome!

[tech4him1]

@jonschlinkert Another way that would work for us if you don't want to change the sources would be to have a re-packaged version for browsers that was run through Babel or something like that and left out the Node functions like matter.read/fs.

[jonschlinkert]

k fixed and published as 3.0.4. I'll create a new issue to discuss fs.

[tech4him1]

Template strings are a new browser feature as well.

[jonschlinkert]

Template strings are a new browser feature as well.

good catch