Webpack entry point syntax confusion - javascript

I was studying some code to understand webpack and what it does and came across this code;
const path = require('path');
const docsBuild = {
entry: {
'app/docs/lib/dice-roller': './app/src/main.js'
},
output: {
path: path.join(_dirname,''),
filename: '[name].js'
}
};
module.exports = [docsBuild];
I can't understand why in place of the property of entry main, there is a file path and why the second parameter of path.join is empty. I'm new to webpack and I couldn't seem to find my answer in its documentation, maybe I didn't search well but help would be appreciated.

According to the webpack documentation:
entry:
The point or points to enter the application. At this point the
application starts executing. If an array is passed all items will be
executed.
So the piece of code:
entry: {
'app/docs/lib/dice-roller': './app/src/main.js'
}
Is setting the entry point for 'app/docs/lib/dice-roller' to './app/src/main.js'
output.path:
The output directory as an absolute path.
The second parameter of path.join is the output directory name itself. In your example is empty but, as you can see in the example provided here, for the below project structure:
webpack-demo
|- package.json
|- webpack.config.js
|- /dist
|- /src
You may set this output configuration where __dirname returns the the directory name of the current module:
output: {
filename: '[name].js',
path: path.resolve(__dirname, 'dist')
}
Also this 'options' documentation has a paragraph which may clarify this a little bit:
Notice that throughout the configuration we use Node's built-in path
module and prefix it with the __dirname global. This prevents file
path issues between operating systems and allows relative paths to
work as expected. See this section for more info on POSIX vs. Windows
paths.
Hope this helps you.

Related

Change domain of images that webpack generates for imported images

Although my dev server is running on localhost:3000, I have set up my host file to point www.mysite.com to localhost. In my JavaScript, I have code like:
import myImage from '../assets/my-image.jpg'
const MyCmp => <img src={myImage} />
Using Webpack's file-loader, it transforms that import into a URL to the hosted image. However, it uses the localhost path to that image, but I'd like it to use the www.mysite.com domain. I looked at both the publicPath and postTransformPublicPath options for file-loader, but those only appear to allow you to modify the part of the path that comes after the domain.
I personally don't like the notion of defining host-information statically in the build output. This is something that should be determined in runtime based on where you actually put your files.
If you are like me then there are two options here.
Both involve you calling a global method that you have defined on i.e. window / global scope.
The purpose of the global method is to resolve the root path (the domain, etc) in runtime.
Define a global method
So lets say you define a method on the global scope somewhere in your startup code like so:
(<any>window).getWebpackBundleRootPath = function (webpackLibraryId) {
if (webpackLibraryId == null) return throw "OOOPS DO SOMETHING HERE!";
// Preferably these variables should be loaded from a config-file of sorts.
if(webpackLibraryId == "yourwebpacklibrary1") return "https://www.yoursite.com/";
// If you have other libraries that are hosted somewhere else, put them here...
return "...some default path for all other libraries...";
};
The next step is to configure webpack to call this global method when it tries to resolve the path.
As I mentioned there are two ways, one that manipulates the output of the webpack and one that is more integrated in webpacks configuration (although only for file-loader but I think it should suffice).
It's worth mentioning that you don't need a global method if you only have one bundle or if you host all your bundles in one place. Then it would be enough to use a global variable instead. It should be quite easy to modify the example below to accommodate this.
First option: configure webpack file-loader to call your method when resolving path
This solution will not require something to be done post build. If this fits your need and covers all scenarios I would go for this option.
Edit your webpack config file
var path = require('path');
let config = {
entry: {
'index': path.join(__dirname, '/public/index.js')
},
output: {
path: path.join(__dirname, '/dist/'),
filename: 'index-bundle.js',
publicPath: 'https://localhost:3000/',
library: 'yourwebpacklibrary1',
...
},
module: {
rules: [{
// Please note that this only defines the resolve behavior for ttf. If you want to resolve other files you need to configure the postTransformPublicPath for those too. This is a big caveat in my opinion and might be a reason for using second option.
test: /\.ttf(\?v=\d+\.\d+\.\d+)?$/,
use: [{
loader: 'file-loader',
options: {
outputPath: 'assets/fonts', // The folder where you store your fonts.
name: '[name].[ext]',
// This is where the magic happens. This lets you override the output of webpack file resolves.
postTransformPublicPath: function (p) {
// Because of the way webpack file-loader works the input from to this method will look something like this: __webpack_public_path__ + "/assets/fonts/yourfont.ttf"
// But we are not interested in using the __webpack_public_path__ variable so lets remove that.
p = p.replace('__webpack_public_path__ + ', '');
// Return a stringified call to our global method and append the relative path to the root path returned.
return `getWebpackBundleRootPath("${config.output.library}") + ${p}`;
}
}
}]
},
},
...
};
module.exports = config;
As you might have noticed in the comments in the webpack config file you need to specify the resolve behavior for each file-loader that you add (if someone knows a better way, please let me know). This is why I still use the second option.
Second option: manipulate the output of the webpack in a postbuild step
Example webpack.config.js file
For completeness sake here is an example of a webpack.config.js file that contains the variables used in the postbuild script.
var path = require('path');
module.exports = {
entry: {
'index': path.join(__dirname, '/public/index.js')
},
output: {
path: path.join(__dirname, '/dist/'),
filename: 'index-bundle.js',
publicPath: 'https://localhost:3000/',
library: 'yourwebpacklibrary1',
...
},
...
}
Create a postbuild.js file
Create a file postbuild.js next to your package.json with the following content:
const fs = require('fs');
// We take the path to the webpack config file as input so that we can read settings from it.
const webpackConfigFile = process.argv[2];
// Read the webpack config file into memory.
const config = require(webpackConfigFile);
// The file to manipulate is the output javascript bundle that webpack produces.
const inputFile = config.output.path + config.output.filename;
// Load the file into memory.
let fileContent = fs.readFileSync(inputFile, 'utf8');
// Replace the default public path with the call to the method. Please note that if you specify a publicPath as '/' or something very common you might end up with a problem so make sure it is unique in the file to avoid other unrelated stuff being replaced as well.
fileContent = fileContent.replace('"' + config.output.publicPath + '"', 'getWebpackBundleRootPath("' + config.output.library + '")');
// Save the manipulated file back to disk.
fs.writeFileSync(inputFile, fileContent, 'utf8');
Call the postbuild.js automatically on build
Next step is to actually call the postbuild.js script after each build.
This can be done in a postscript in package.json like so (in the script section in your package.json):
{
"scripts": {
"build": "webpack",
"postbuild": "node postbuild.js ./webpack.config.js"
}
}
From now on whenever you run the build script it will also run the postbuild script (from npm or yarn, etc).
You can of course also manually run the postbuild.js script manually after each build instead.
but those only appear to allow you to modify the part of the path that comes after the domain.
Not really, you can give it an URL that includes the domain.
In your case, assuming your images are under the assets directory, you will have something like this in your webpack.config.js
...
module: {
rules: [
...
{
test: /\.(png|jpe?g|gif|svg)$/,
use: {
loader: 'file-loader',
options: {
publicPath: 'https://www.example.com/assets',
outputPath: 'assets'
}
}
},
...
]
}
...

WebPack configuration- what is the proper code and what does it mean

I'm learning React and want to understand how web pack is configured for a project.
It would be great if someone can tell me what the following lines of code are doing.
const fs = require('fs')
const path = require('path')
const webpack = require('webpack')
function isDirectory(dir) {
return fs.lstatSync(dir).isDirectory()
}
const SubjectsDir = path.join(__dirname, 'subjects')
const SubjectDirs = fs.readdirSync(SubjectsDir).filter(function (dir) {
return isDirectory(path.join(SubjectsDir, dir))
})
module.exports = {
devtool: 'source-map',
entry: SubjectDirs.reduce(function (entries, dir) {
if (fs.existsSync(path.join(SubjectsDir, dir, 'exercise.js')))
entries[dir + '-exercise'] = path.join(SubjectsDir, dir, 'exercise.js')
if (fs.existsSync(path.join(SubjectsDir, dir, 'solution.js')))
entries[dir + '-solution'] = path.join(SubjectsDir, dir, 'solution.js')
if (fs.existsSync(path.join(SubjectsDir, dir, 'lecture.js')))
entries[dir + '-lecture'] = path.join(SubjectsDir, dir, 'lecture.js')
return entries
}, {
shared: [ 'react', 'react-dom' ]
}),
output: {
path: '__build__',
filename: '[name].js',
chunkFilename: '[id].chunk.js',
publicPath: '__build__'
},
resolve: {
extensions: [ '', '.js', '.css' ]
},
module: {
loaders: [
{ test: /\.css$/, loader: 'style!css' },
{ test: /\.js$/, exclude: /node_modules|mocha-browser\.js/, loader: 'babel' },
{ test: /\.woff(2)?$/, loader: 'url?limit=10000&mimetype=application/font-woff' },
{ test: /\.ttf$/, loader: 'file' },
{ test: /\.eot$/, loader: 'file' },
{ test: /\.svg$/, loader: 'file' },
{ test: require.resolve('jquery'), loader: 'expose?jQuery' }
]
},
plugins: [
new webpack.optimize.CommonsChunkPlugin({ name: 'shared' })
],
devServer: {
quiet: false,
noInfo: false,
historyApiFallback: {
rewrites: [
{ from: /ReduxDataFlow\/exercise.html/,
to: 'ReduxDataFlow\/exercise.html'
}
]
},
stats: {
// Config for minimal console.log mess.
assets: true,
colors: true,
version: true,
hash: true,
timings: true,
chunks: false,
chunkModules: false
}
}
}
This informaiton is coming from a training course, but they do not explain what the lines are doing.
Webpack is what we call a module bundler for JavaScript applications. You can do a whole slew of things with it that help a client browser download and run your code. In the case of React, it helps convert JSX code into plain JS so that the browser can understand it. JSX itself will not run in the browser. We can even use plugins to help minify code, inject HTML, bundle various groups of code together, etc. Now that the introduction to Webpack is out of the way, let's take a look at the code. I will be starting from the very top. Feel free to skip down to #3 if you are only interested in the Webpack configuration object.
The following code will require the modules that are needed in this file. fs is short for "filesystem" and is a module that gives you functions to run that can access the project's filesystem. path is a common module used to resolve or create pathnames to files and is very easy to use! And then we have the webpack module through which we can access webpack specific functions (ie: webpack plugins like webpack.optimize.UglifyJsPlugin).
const fs = require('fs')
const path = require('path')
const webpack = require('webpack')
These next few lines first set up a helper function to determine whether or not something in the filesystem being read is a directory.
function isDirectory(dir) {
return fs.lstatSync(dir).isDirectory()
}
const SubjectsDir = path.join(__dirname, 'subjects')
const SubjectDirs = fs.readdirSync(SubjectsDir).filter(function (dir) {
return isDirectory(path.join(SubjectsDir, dir))
})
devtool specifies which developer tool you want to use to help with debugging. Options are listed here : https://webpack.github.io/docs/configuration.html#devtool. This can be very useful in helping you determine exactly which files and lines and columns errors are coming from.
devtool: 'source-map'
These next few lines tell Webpack where to begin bundling your files. These initial files are called entry points. The entry property in a Webpack configuration object should be an object whose keys determine the name of a bundle and values point to a relative path to the entry file or the name of a node_module. You can also pass in an array of files to each entry point. This will cause each of those files to be bundled together into one file under the name specified by the key - ie: react and react-dom will each be parsed and have their outputs bundled under the name shared.
entry: SubjectDirs.reduce(function (entries, dir) {
if (fs.existsSync(path.join(SubjectsDir, dir, 'exercise.js')))
entries[dir + '-exercise'] = path.join(SubjectsDir, dir, 'exercise.js')
if (fs.existsSync(path.join(SubjectsDir, dir, 'solution.js')))
entries[dir + '-solution'] = path.join(SubjectsDir, dir, 'solution.js')
if (fs.existsSync(path.join(SubjectsDir, dir, 'lecture.js')))
entries[dir + '-lecture'] = path.join(SubjectsDir, dir, 'lecture.js')
return entries
}, {
shared: [ 'react', 'react-dom' ]
}),
In the reduce function we simply read through the SubjectsDir, determine whether files exercise.js, lecture.js & solution.js exist, and then provide the path to those files as values associated with the key names identified by dir + '-' + filename (ie: myDir-exercise). This may end up looking like the following if only exercise.js exists:
entry : {
'myDir-exercise': 'subjectDir/myDir/exercise.js',
share: ['react', 'react-dom']
}
After we provide entry points to the Webpack configuration object, we must specify where we want Webpack to output the result of bundling those files. This can be specified in the output property.
output: {
path: '__build__',
filename: '[name].js',
chunkFilename: '[id].chunk.js',
publicPath: '__build__'
},
The path property defines the absolute path to the output directory. In this case we call it __build__.
The filename property defines the output name of each entry point file. Webpack understands that by specifying '[name]' you are referring to the key you assigned to each entry point in the entry property (ie: shared or myDir-exercise).
The chunkFilename property is similar to the filename property but for non-entry chunk files which can be specified by the CommonChunksPlugin (see below). The use of [id] is similar to the use of [name].
The publicPath property defines the public URL to where your files are located, as in the URL from which to access your files through a browser.
The resolve property tells Webpack what how to resolve your files if it can not find them for some reason. There are several properties we can pass here with extensions being one of them. The extensions property tells Webpack which file extensions to try on a file if one is not specified in your code.
resolve: {
extensions: [ '', '.js', '.css' ]
},
For example, let's say we have the following code
const exercise = require('./exercise');
We can leave out the .js because we have provided that string in the resolve property of the webpack configuration and Webpack will try and append .js to this at bundling time to find your file. As of Webpack 2 we also no longer need to specify an empty string as the first element of the resolve property.
The module property tells Webpack how modules within our project will be treated. There are several properties we can add here and I suggest taking a look at the documentation for more details. loaders is a common property to use and with that we can tell Webpack how to parse particular file types within our project. The test property in each loader is simply a Regex that tells Webpack which files to run this loader on. This /\.js$/ for example will run the specified loader on files that end with .js. babel-loader is a widely used JavaScript + ES6 loader. The exclude property tells Webpack which files to not run with the specified loader. The loader property is the name of the loader. As of Webpack 2 we are no longer able to drop the -loader from the string as we see here.
Plugins have a wide range of functions. As mentioned earlier we can use plugins to help minify code or to build chunks that are used across our entire application, like react and react-dom. Here we see the CommonChunksPlugin being used which will bundle the files under the entry name shared together as a chunk so that they can be separated from the rest of the application.
Finally we have the devServer property which specifies certain configurations for the behavior of webpack-dev-server, which is a separate module from webpack. This module can be useful for development in that you can opt out of building your own web server and allow webpack-dev-server to serve your static files. It also does not write the outputs to your filesystem and serves the bundle from a location in memory at the path specified by the publicPath property in the output property of the Webpack configuration object (see #5). This helps make development faster. To use it you would simply run webpack-dev-server in place of webpack. Take a look at the documentation online for more details.
The configuration object that we've taken a look at follows the Webpack 1 standard. There are many changes between Webpack 1 and 2 in terms of configuration syntax that would be important to take a look at. The concepts are still the same, however. Take a look at the documentation for information on migrating to Webpack 2 and for further Webpack 2 details.

Code Splitting with Webpack for Intl polyfill

I'm trying to create a bundle for the intl polyfill to load it only for browser which requires it.
Using the following code, it creates the bundle in my output folder
if (!window.Intl) {
require.ensure(['intl/dist/Intl'], (require) => {
window.Intl = require('intl/dist/Intl');
}, 'intl-bundle');
}
The first thing I noticed is the size of the file is huge, it contains all the languages, is there a way to define the languages I want?
The other issue is that when the browser tries to download the file, it tries from the root folder of my app. So instead of downloading http://mydomain/js/1.intl-bundle.js, it tries to get http://mydomain/1.intl-bundle.js
Is there a way to set from where the file should be downloaded?
My webpack.config.js output looks like this:
output: {
path: './js/',
filename: '[name].js'
},
And the last question, can I remove the 1. at the beginning of the name of the file, just to have intl-bundle.js?
Thanks
I'm actually going to answer a few of my own question as I just found some of the solution after a few hours of research.
For the second question, I wasn't defining the publicPath in my build, which was the reason why the browser was downloading the file from the root of my domain. More info: https://github.com/webpack/docs/wiki/configuration#outputpublicpath
output: {
path: './js/',
publicPath: './js/'
}
For the last question, you can name your chunks with the following:
output: {
chunkFilename: '[id]-[name]-[chunkhash].js'
}
This allows you to decide the name of your chunks.
I still don't have any answer to reduce the size of the intl file.

Multiple entry points without common chunks or dynamic loading

I'm making a chrome extension that hosts multiple applications (multiple devtools panels), each one independent. I need webpack to watch multiple entry points and produce multiple bundles, I don't need common chunks. I definitely do not want to use amd in the client side code like this.
/appOne
index.js
/components
/blah
/foobar
/appTwo
index.js
/components
..etc
/appThree
index.js
/components
..etc.
/chrome <- basically the "dist" folder
/appOne
index.html
bundle.js
/appTwo
index.html
bundle.js
/appThree
etc...
As per docs on multiple entries I've been doing:
{
entry: {
appOne: './appOne/index.js',
appTwo: './appTwo/index.js'
},
output: {
path: path.join(__dirname, 'chrome', '[name]'),
filename: 'bundle.js' //can be the same since they should be output in different folders
}
}
I get the error:
Path variable [name] not implemented in this context: C:\Users\Admin\projects\crx\chrome\[name]
So I guess you cannot have the [name] variable in the path setting for multiple entries?
You should use [name] in the filename field instead of path. Looking at the docs, filename lists the [name] variable and path does not (only showing [hash]).
You would use something like:
{
path: path.join(__dirname, 'chrome'),
filename: '[name]/bundle.js'
}
The documentation does not explicitly state the filename can have multiple path segments, it only says the filename must not be an absolute path.

Simple solution to share modules loaded via NPM across multiple Browserify or Webpack bundles

Pulling my hair out here looking for a simple solution to share code, required via NPM, across multiple Browserify or Webpack bundles. Thinking, is there such a thing as a file "bridge"?
This isn't due to compile time (I'm aware of watchify) but rather the desire to extract out all of my vendor specific libs into vendor.js so to keep my app.js filesize down and to not crash the browser with massive sourcemaps. Plus, I find it way cleaner should the need to view the compiled js arise. And so:
// vendor.js
require('react');
require('lodash');
require('other-npm-module');
require('another-npm-module');
Its very important that the code be loaded from NPM as opposed to Bower, or saved into some 'vendor' directory in order to be imported via a relative path and identified via a shim. I'd like to keep every library reference pulled via NPM except for my actual application source.
In app.js I keep all of my sourcecode, and via the externals array, exclude vendor libraries listed above from compilation:
// app.js
var React = require('react');
var _ = require('lodash');
var Component = React.createClass()
// ...
And then in index.html, I require both files
// index.html
<script src='vendor.js'></script>
<script src='app.js'></script>
Using Browserify or Webpack, how can I make it so that app.js can "see" into those module loaded via npm? I'm aware of creating a bundle with externals and then referencing the direct file (in, say, node_modules) via an alias, but I'm hoping to find a solution that is more automatic and less "Require.js" like.
Basically, I'm wondering if it is possible to bridge the two so that app.js can look inside vendor.js in order to resolve dependencies. This seems like a simple, straightforward operation but I can't seem to find an answer anywhere on this wide, wide web.
Thanks!
Listing all the vendor files/modules and using CommonChunkPlugin is indeed the recommended way. This gets pretty tedious though, and error prone.
Consider these NPM modules: fastclick and mprogress. Since they have not adopted the CommonJS module format, you need to give webpack a hand, like this:
require('imports?define=>false!fastclick')(document.body);
require('mprogress/mprogress.min.css');
var Mprogress = require('mprogress/mprogress.min.js'),
Now assuming you would want both fastclick and mprogress in your vendor chunk, you would probably try this:
module.exports = {
entry: {
app: "./app.js",
vendor: ["fastclick", "mprogress", ...]
Alas, it doesn't work. You need to match the calls to require():
module.exports = {
entry: {
app: "./app.js",
vendor: [
"imports?define=>false!fastclick",
"mprogress/mprogress.min.css",
"mprogress/mprogress.min.js",
...]
It gets old, even with some resolve.alias trickery. Here is my workaround. CommonChunkPlugin lets you specify a callback that will return whether or not you want a module to be included in the vendor chunk. If your own source code is in a specific src directory, and the rest is in the node_modules directory, just reject the modules based on their path:
var node_modules_dir = path.join(__dirname, 'node_modules'),
app_dir = path.join(__dirname, 'src');
module.exports = {
entry: {
app: "./app.js",
},
output: {
filename: "bundle.js"
},
plugins: [
new webpack.optimize.CommonsChunkPlugin(
/* chunkName= */"vendor",
/* filename= */"vendor.bundle.js"
function (module, count) {
return module.resource && module.resource.indexOf(app_dir) === -1;
}
)
]
};
Where module.resource is the path to the module being considered. You could also do the opposite, and include only the module if it is inside node_modules_dir, i.e.:
return module.resource && module.resource.indexOf(node_modules_dir) === 0;
but in my situation, I'd rather say: "put everything that is not in my source source tree in a vendor chunk".
Hope that helps.
With webpack you'd use multiple entry points and the CommonChunkPlugin.
Taken from the webpack docs:
To split your app into 2 files, say app.js and vendor.js, you can require the vendor files in vendor.js. Then pass this name to the CommonChunkPlugin as shown below.
module.exports = {
entry: {
app: "./app.js",
vendor: ["jquery", "underscore", ...],
},
output: {
filename: "bundle.js"
},
plugins: [
new webpack.optimize.CommonsChunkPlugin(
/* chunkName= */"vendor",
/* filename= */"vendor.bundle.js"
)
]
};
This will remove all modules in the vendor chunk from the app chunk. The bundle.js will now contain just your app code, without any of it’s dependencies. These are in vendor.bundle.js.
In your HTML page load vendor.bundle.js before bundle.js.
<script src="vendor.bundle.js"></script>
<script src="bundle.js"></script>
// vendor anything coming from node_modules
minChunks: module => /node_modules/.test(module.resource)
Source: https://github.com/webpack/webpack/issues/2372#issuecomment-213149173

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