Webpack Starter

Setting up a fresh Webpack configuration can be overwhelming, even when following a start-to-finish guide like SurviveJS - Webpack. We have compiled a set of sane defaults that can be customized in order to bootstrap new and existing projects.

If you are upgrading to v4 or v5, please see our migration guide.

Minimal Setup

To start using this project, install the package and set up your webpack.config.babel.js to customize the default configuration.

npm install --save-dev @vizworx/webpack-starter

npm install --save-dev @pmmmwh/react-refresh-webpack-plugin react-refresh

webpack.config.babel.js

import webpackStarter from '@vizworx/webpack-starter';

export default webpackStarter({
  html: { title: 'My Webpack Project' },
});

Configuration

Many of the parts can be configured through the webpackStarter function, using the options listed in their section.

import webpackStarter from '@vizworx/webpack-starter';

export default webpackStarter({
  html: {
    title: 'My Webpack Project'
    meta: {
      robots: 'noindex, nofollow',
    },
  },
  react: true,
  hot: true,
  development: {
    port: 3000,
  },
  production: {
    lazyChunks: true,
  },
});

If you pass { react: false } or { hot: false }, you do not need the @pmmmwh/react-refresh-webpack-plugin or react-refresh dependencies.

Webpack Middleware

If you are using the webpack-dev-middleware with Express, you can use addStarterMiddleware to automatically add the appropriate middleware and hot reload support.

import express from 'express';
import path from 'path';

const app = express();
const publicFolder = path.resolve(__dirname, '../client');
app.use(express.static(publicFolder));

if (process.env.NODE_ENV !== 'development') {
  app.get('*', (req, res) => res.sendFile(path.resolve(publicFolder, 'index.html')));
} else {
  /* eslint-disable global-require, import/no-extraneous-dependencies */
  // To prevent these from loading in production, we need to use a scoped require
  const { addStarterMiddleware } = require('@vizworx/webpack-starter');
  const webpackConfig = require('../../webpack.config.babel').default;
  addStarterMiddleware(app, webpackConfig);
  /* eslint-enable global-require, import/no-extraneous-dependencies */
}

// eslint-disable-next-line no-console
app.listen(3000, () => console.log(`Listening on http://localhost:3000 (${process.env.NODE_ENV})`));

Routing

This option will register GET * (or GET yourEntryPointFolder/* if you have multiple entrypoints) with the Express app to serve Webpack's generated index.html. Any other GET routes must be registered prior to running addStarterMiddleware as any GET route added afterward will be inaccessible.

Parts

The configuration has been split into multiple parts, that can be used via the webpackStarter function, or used manually by passing an array of parts into webpack-merge (SurviveJS - Webpack explains this in detail).

import merge from 'webpack-merge';
import * as parts from '@vizworx/webpack-starter';

export default merge([
  parts.common(),
  parts.babel({ react: false }),
  parts.html({ title: 'Hello World' }),
  (process.env.NODE_ENV ==='development')
    ? parts.development({ port: 3000 })
    : parts.production(),
]);

babel

The babel part will set up babel-loader to process .js files, and can optionally add support for .jsx as well.

Options

• react (boolean): Enables the .jsx extension
• hot (boolean): Enables hot-reloading of React
• fullySpecified (boolean: false): Require modules to fully specify extensions
• babel (object): Options that are passed to babel-loader

common

The common part will set up a default entrypoint, output names, extensions, and the CaseSensitivePathsPlugin.

development

The development part will set the Webpack mode to development, enable the (cheap-module-eval-source-map devtool)[https://webpack.js.org/configuration/devtool/], and enable the devServer.

All options that are provided will be passed through to the devServer. The default is to use the HOST and PORT environment variables and to rewrite all missing paths to /index.html to support Single Page Applications.

fonts

The fonts part will automatically process woff, woff2, ttf, otf, and eot. Any files smaller than 8KB will be converted to Base64 and inlined, and the rest will be output in the fonts folder.

Options

• staticPath (string): The path (without the leading slash) that the fonts should be loaded from (eg. static)

gitRevision

The gitRevision part will inject the current git commit hash (and tag if there is one) into the header of every generated chunk. This simplifies the process of associating a compiled chunk to the code it was built from. This can be disabled by passing { gitRevision: false } in the webpackStarter argument.

html

The html part uses a tweaked version of the html-webpack-plugin template.

Options

In addition to the standard html-webpack-plugin options, you can also use:

• extraHead (string or [string]): HTML to add into the <head> of the template

• extraBody (string or [string]): HTML to add to the end of the <body> of the template

images

The images part will add support for loading svg, gif, jpg, jpeg, and png from JS and CSS. If the file is smaller than 8KB, it will be converted to Base64 and inlined.

Options

• staticPath (string): The path (without the leading slash) that the images should be loaded from (eg. static)

production

The production part will set the Webpack mode to production, and enable the CleanWebpackPlugin and ManifestPlugin. It can also set up some common defaults for code-splitting and lazy-loading chunks.

Options

• lazyChunks (boolean or object): This will enable some generic vendor chunk optimizations for code splitting and lazy loading. It assumes that you have set up multiple code-splits and will attempt to keep async vendors in a shared file.
  • minSize (number): The minimum size (bytes) required before a new vendor chunk will be created
  • maxSize (number): The maximum size (bytes) that a vendor chunk may be before it is split in half
• clean (object): This will be passed to clean-webpack-plugin
• manifest (object): This will be passed to webpack-manifest-plugin

react

The react part adds support for hot-reloading components optionally with hooks, the react flag is set to true by default.

Options

• entry: See Entry Points for options
• hot (boolean or object): Enables the hot-reloading option and adds hooks support for hot-reloading. To enable this option make sure to:
  1. npm install --save-dev @pmmmwh/react-refresh-webpack-plugin react-refresh
  2. Include the fast-refresh/babel plugin only in development.

const isDevelopment = process.env.NODE_ENV !== 'production';

module.exports = {
  presets: ['@babel/preset-env', '@babel/preset-react'],
  plugins: isDevelopment ? ['react-refresh/babel'] : [],
};

reactSVG

The reactSVG part will allow JS/JSX files to automatically convert svg files into React components, via @svgr/webpack.

styles

The styles part will add support for CSS, PostCSS, and optionally Sass, for both development and production. It does not provide a PostCSS configuration by default, allowing you to add your own postcss.config.js.

Options

• extract (boolean): Should the compiled CSS be extracted into a css file that is added to the <head>
• postcss (boolean or object: true): Should PostCSS be used. If passed an object, it will be passed to the postcss-loader
• sass (boolean or object: false): Should Sass be used to compile .sass, .scss, and .css files. If passed an object, it will be passed to the sass-loader, which you will need to install.