Magento + RequireJS - How to use non-AMD custom javascript with jQuery?

Question

First off, I made a custom javascript file, main.js. Quite simple; it's just this:

$("#testp").text("Hello!");

#testp is in one of my phtml files, with just <p id="testp">Hello World!</p>.

Beforehand, just to let you know: jQuery is imported automatically by RequireJS because jquery.js is under the baseURL already. In the Chrome Firebug console, I can confirm this by typing jQuery and an object is sent back. However, the commonly used $ which I need to access jQuery is undefined. This is a problem because I have plenty of other libraries that use $ in place of jQuery keyword.

My questions are:

1. How would I import main.js into RequireJS so that the script can be executed? If main.js runs successfully, I would expect the paragraph to show "Hello!" instead of "Hello World!"
2. Main.js is dependent on jQuery. How would I make sure that jQuery will be accessible in main.js?
3. The jQuery keyword returns an object while $ does not. How can I configure jQuery to let $ be a global variable?

Answer 1

Require forces us to avoid global variables, if you want to use $ in your script you have to define it as a AMD module

define([
 "jquery"
], function ($) {
 // Here you can use $ with a local scope
}); 

Then declare your script in require-config.js

var config = {
 map: {
 '*': {
 'Yourmodule':'path/to/main',
 }
};