topic Re: Why are so many dojo modules pulled in? in ArcGIS JavaScript Maps SDK Questions

Why are so many dojo modules pulled in?

RexBradford — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:08:57 GMT

I'm wondering if it's possible to reduce the number of unused and unwanted dojo modules being pulled in, to help reduce app load time.

I am explicitly requiring only these 11 modules:

dojo.require("esri.map");
dojo.require("esri.layers.osm");
dojo.require("esri.virtualearth.VEGeocoder");
dojo.require("esri.layers.FeatureLayer");
dojo.require("esri.layers.KMLLayer");
dojo.require("esri.dijit.Scalebar");
dojo.require("esri.toolbars.navigation");
dojo.require("dijit.layout.BorderContainer");
dojo.require("dijit.layout.ContentPane");
dojo.require("dijit.Dialog");
dojo.require("dojox.collections.Dictionary");

so these entries in Firebug's net window are hardly surprising, except maybe the first:

firebug.xd.js
svg.xd.js
jsapi_en-us.xd.js
osm.xd.js
KMLLayer.xd.js
FeatureLayer.xd.js
Scalebar.xd.js
BorderContainer.xd.js
Dialog.xd.js
ContentPane.xd.js
Dictionary.xd.js.

but then look at what keeps coming after those (.xd.js file extensions removed to save room):

iframe, MapImageLayer, Popup, _LayoutWidget, cookie, _ContentPanelResizeMixin, html, loading, TimedMoveable, _FormMixin, DialogUnderlay, _DialogMixin, common, TooltipDialog, PopupBase, Chart2D, base, Tooltip, _Contained, Default, Default (twice!), Invisible, Lines, Areas, MarkersOnly, Markers, Scatter, StackedAreas, StackedLines, Columns, StackedColumns, Bars, ClusteredColumns, StackedBars, ClusteredBars, Pie, Grid, Bubble, Candlesticks, Spider, OHLC, Chart Theme, Tooltip, Base, functional, fold, scan, linear, colors, common, utils, Base, common, Base, reversed, fx, gradutils, sequence, Element, _PlotEvents, primitive, easing, Series, color, Palette, object, lambda, array, common, _base.

There are over 70 in all. A few dozen seem to be related to charting, which is ironic given:

1. I am using google charts for all charting, and don't try to include any dojo chart tools at all
2. On startup my app prints out two warnings from inside dojo somewhere:
EXPERIMENTAL: dojox.charting.plot2d.Spider -- APIs subject to change without notice.
DEPRECATED: dojox.charting.Chart2D Use dojo.charting.Chart instead and require all other components explicitly -- will be removed in version: 2.0

Does anybody know how to get dojo under control? I thought the whole idea of Dojo was that it would only bring in stuff that's needed?

Rex Bradford
Direct Relief International

Re: Why are so many dojo modules pulled in?

DanielNieto_Jr — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 14:12:13 GMT

My best guess are the libraries you are including have their own dependencies that they are also bringing in, I don't know if there is much you can do about that.

Re: Why are so many dojo modules pulled in?

RexBradford — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 14:30:04 GMT

My best guess are the libraries you are including have their own dependencies that they are also bringing in, I don't know if there is much you can do about that.

Hmmm, thanks for the reply. But I don't know of any libraries I'm pulling in that would do this - there are no other dojo.requires in the code. My working assumption is that the dojo/esri library itself (http://serverapi.arcgisonline.com/jsapi/arcgis/?v=2.5) is doing this on my behalf.

The only other libraries that are not in "my" code are:

ajax.aspnetcdn.com/ajax/jQuery/jquery-1.6.1.min.js
ajax.aspnetcdn.com/ajax/jquery.ui/1.8.12/jquery-ui.min.js
http://www.google.com/jsapi
http://bit.ly/javascript-api.js?version=latest&amp........
jquery.tmpl.min.js (beta jquery template system, copied locally)

and none of them seem very likely to be requesting dojo modules.....

Rex Bradord

Re: Why are so many dojo modules pulled in?

JeffPace — Sat, 11 Dec 2021 10:04:07 GMT

you are calling them, just indirectly. For example you call

dojo.require(dijit.Dialog)

which has code

if(!dojo._hasResource["dijit.Dialog"]){
    dojo._hasResource["dijit.Dialog"]=true;
dojo.provide("dijit.Dialog");
dojo.require("dojo.dnd.move");
dojo.require("dojo.dnd.TimedMoveable");
dojo.require("dojo.fx");
dojo.require("dojo.window");
dojo.require("dijit._Widget");
dojo.require("dijit._Templated");
dojo.require("dijit._CssStateMixin");
dojo.require("dijit.form._FormMixin");
dojo.require("dijit._DialogMixin");
dojo.require("dijit.DialogUnderlay");
dojo.require("dijit.layout.ContentPane");
dojo.requireLocalization("dijit","common",null,"ROOT,ar,ca,cs,da,de,el,es,fi,fr,he,hu,it,ja,kk,ko,nb,nl,pl,pt,pt-pt,ro,ru,sk,sl,sv,th,tr,zh,zh-tw");
dojo.require("dijit.TooltipDialog");
dojo.declare("dijit._DialogBase",[dijit._Templated,dijit.form._FormMixin,dijit._DialogMixin,dijit._CssStateMixin],{

so as you can see alot of the requires are being loaded by why you required.

Re: Why are so many dojo modules pulled in?

RexBradford — Sat, 11 Dec 2021 10:04:11 GMT

you are calling them, just indirectly. For example you call

dojo.require(dijit.Dialog)

which has code

if(!dojo._hasResource["dijit.Dialog"]){
    dojo._hasResource["dijit.Dialog"]=true;
dojo.provide("dijit.Dialog");
dojo.require("dojo.dnd.move");
dojo.require("dojo.dnd.TimedMoveable");
dojo.require("dojo.fx");
dojo.require("dojo.window");
dojo.require("dijit._Widget");
dojo.require("dijit._Templated");
dojo.require("dijit._CssStateMixin");
dojo.require("dijit.form._FormMixin");
dojo.require("dijit._DialogMixin");
dojo.require("dijit.DialogUnderlay");
dojo.require("dijit.layout.ContentPane");
dojo.requireLocalization("dijit","common",null,"ROOT,ar,ca,cs,da,de,el,es,fi,fr,he,hu,it,ja,kk,ko,nb,nl,pl,pt,pt-pt,ro,ru,sk,sl,sv,th,tr,zh,zh-tw");
dojo.require("dijit.TooltipDialog");
dojo.declare("dijit._DialogBase",[dijit._Templated,dijit.form._FormMixin,dijit._DialogMixin,dijit._CssStateMixin],{

so as you can see alot of the requires are being loaded by why you required.

That makes sense, and what I assumed, but I was surprised for instance to see all of the charting stuff pulled in, when not called for explicitly. Does Dialog pull these in too, or something else?

Re: Why are so many dojo modules pulled in?

JeffPace — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:33:58 GMT

That makes sense, and what I assumed, but I was surprised for instance to see all of the charting stuff pulled in, when not called for explicitly. Does Dialog pull these in too, or something else?

I have no idea why, but those are all pulled in when you
dojo.require("esri.layers.osm");

an must be an embedded component of OpenStreetMap

Re: Why are so many dojo modules pulled in?

RexBradford — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:40:17 GMT

That makes sense, and what I assumed, but I was surprised for instance to see all of the charting stuff pulled in, when not called for explicitly. Does Dialog pull these in too, or something else?

I did a little more testing. It appears that

dojo.require("esri.layers.KMLLayer");

is responsible for pulling in all the chart stuff. In fact, it pulls in about 45 of the roughly 70 modules I wasn't explicitly asking for. I took it out as I'm not currently using KMLLayers.

Is this a bug?

Rex Bradford
Direct Relief International

Re: Why are so many dojo modules pulled in?

JeffPace — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:42:57 GMT

I did a little more testing. It appears that

dojo.require("esri.layers.KMLLayer");

is responsible for pulling in all the chart stuff. I too it out as I'm not currently using KMLLayers.

Is this a bug?

Rex Bradford
Direct Relief International

no its not a bug. If it is required for KML to work, it is required. same with OSM.

Re: Why are so many dojo modules pulled in?

derekswingley1 — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:47:02 GMT

Jeff is right, it's not a bug. KMLLayer loads the charting modules. Why would you dojo.require it if you're not using it?

We had a brief discussion about the deprecation warnings on twitter this when we first added the KMLLayer: https://twitter.com/#!/derekswingley/status/89451030831575041

Re: Why are so many dojo modules pulled in?

RexBradford — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:47:44 GMT

no its not a bug. If it is required for KML to work, it is required. same with OSM.

Thanks. Are the modules only pulled in by OSM when the layer is used though? If I add dojo.require("esri.layers.osm"); to my code, I don't get all those charting modules. With KML, just requiring seems to be all it takes to pull in the modules.

Rex Bradford
Direct Relief International

Re: Why are so many dojo modules pulled in?

derekswingley1 — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:54:41 GMT

Thanks. Are the modules only pulled in by OSM when the layer is used though? If I add dojo.require("esri.layers.osm"); to my code, I don't get all those charting modules. With KML, just requiring seems to be all it takes to pull in the modules.

Rex Bradford
Direct Relief International

OSM doesn't require the charting modules, KMLLayer does. When you dojo.require KMLLayer, the charting modules are loaded. Not that it really matters, but the actual dependency is KMLLayer requires esri.dijit.Popup and popup requires the charting modules.

Re: Why are so many dojo modules pulled in?

RexBradford — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 18:57:08 GMT

OSM doesn't require the charting modules, KMLLayer does. When you dojo.require KMLLayer, the charting modules are loaded. Not that it really matters, but the actual dependency is KMLLayer requires esri.dijit.Popup and popup requires the charting modules.

Thanks again, this information helps a lot. Still, not to be cheeky, but I think having esri.digit.Popup automatically pull in a couple dozen charting modules is a "performance bug".

Rex Bradford
Direct Relief International

Re: Why are so many dojo modules pulled in?

MarkHoover — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:18:09 GMT

One assumes the Popup dijit requires those modules to function properly, otherwise they wouldn't be brought in.

Re: Why are so many dojo modules pulled in?

derekswingley1 — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:28:22 GMT

...I think having esri.digit.Popup automatically pull in a couple dozen charting modules is a "performance bug".

It's by design. The popup can do many different things. All the additional functionality requires more resources/modules.

Re: Why are so many dojo modules pulled in?

RexBradford — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 20:31:42 GMT

It's by design. The popup can do many different things. All the additional functionality requires more resources/modules.

I get it. Still, is there not a way to pull charts in only when you actually want to use charts in a popup? I guess I don't understand dojo well enough - it seems like a benefit of having a system which can pull in modules on demand would be the ability to avoid this very problem.

Re: Why are so many dojo modules pulled in?

JeffPace — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 14:31:43 GMT

I get it. Still, is there not a way to pull charts in only when you actually want to use charts in a popup? I guess I don't understand dojo well enough - it seems like a benefit of having a system which can pull in modules on demand would be the ability to avoid this very problem.

sure, you could write you open popup, and conditionally load the requires based on whether or not a chart is included.

Since the esri api preps for charts in the popup, it HAS to preload the module.

Re: Why are so many dojo modules pulled in?

MattLane — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 19:59:41 GMT

It's by design. The popup can do many different things. All the additional functionality requires more resources/modules.

Hate to open back up this discussion, but I'd like to discuss it regarding PopupMobile. Since PopupMobile is meant to be used on a mobile accessed site, I would think minimizing size and # of requests would be important. Yeah, I could hack up and host my own PopupMobile to remove unnecessary stuff (like charting in my case), which I'll have to do again if I want to switch to 2.9 when it comes out.

My testing with only v2.8compact and claro.css links:

dojo.require("esri.map") only - 6 requests and 168KB total
dojo.require("esri.map") AND dojo.require("esri.dijit.PopupMobile") - 94 requests and 433.5KB total