Introduction:
Recently I was working on a SharePoint Framework (SPFx) solution that needed multiple interconnected SPFX components. Everything seemed fine until a seemingly harmless update to one web part broke others. It was frustrating. Hours of debugging later, the root cause was revealed: circular dependencies between shared services and modules.
This wasn’t just a one-off problem; the tangled dependencies were becoming a major bottleneck for scalability and maintainability. I needed a way to pinpoint and resolve these issues quickly.
Problem Statement:
Circular dependencies can creep into SPFx projects as shared libraries grow and multiple developers contribute. These hidden cycles lead to runtime errors, failed builds, and unpredictable behaviours in your solution. They’re notoriously hard to identify manually, especially in large projects where dependencies span multiple files and modules.
Solution:
That’s when I found Skott, a game-changing tool for analysing circular dependencies in JavaScript and TypeScript projects. I integrated it into my SPFx solution, and in no time, it generated a detailed dependency graph highlighting the circular references.
Armed with this insight, my team can now systematically refactor the codebase. We can modularize shared services, remove unnecessary interconnections, and ensure a clean separation of concerns.
Getting Started:
Install Skott using npm package manager :
npm i -g skott
Using the CLI
skott --displayMode=webapp --trackThirdPartyDependencies --ignorePattern="test/**/*"
Conclusion:
Circular dependencies don’t have to be a roadblock in SPFx projects. Tools like Skott simplify the debugging process and improve the maintainability of the code. If you’re tackling large SPFx solutions, give Skott a try—you’ll thank yourself for it!