THIS MIDDLEWARE SHOULD ONLY USED FOR DEVELOPMENT!
DO NOT USE IT IN PRODUCTION!
It's a simple wrapper middleware for webpack. It serves the files emitted from webpack over a connect server.
It has a few advantages over bundling it as files:
- No files are written to disk, it handle the files in memory
- If files changed in watch mode, the middleware no longer serves the old bundle, but delays requests until the compiling has finished. You don't have to wait before refreshing the page after a file modification.
- I may add some specific optimization in future releases.
var webpackMiddleware = require("webpack-dev-middleware");
app.use(webpackMiddleware(...));
Example usage:
app.use(webpackMiddleware(webpack({
// webpack options
// webpackMiddleware takes a Compiler object as first parameter
// which is returned by webpack(...) without callback.
entry: "...",
output: {
path: "/"
// no real path is required, just pass "/"
// but it will work with other paths too.
}
}), {
// all options optional
noInfo: false,
// display no info to console (only warnings and errors)
quiet: false,
// display nothing to the console
lazy: true,
// switch into lazy mode
// that means no watching, but recompilation on every request
watchOptions: {
aggregateTimeout: 300,
poll: true
},
// watch options (only lazy: false)
publicPath: "/assets/",
// public path to bind the middleware to
// use the same as in webpack
headers: { "X-Custom-Header": "yes" },
// custom headers
stats: {
colors: true
}
// options for formating the statistics
}));
This part shows how you might interact with the middleware during runtime:
-
close(callback)
- stop watching for file changesvar webpackDevMiddlewareInstance = webpackMiddleware(/* see example usage */); app.use(webpackDevMiddlewareInstance); // After 10 seconds stop watching for file changes: setTimeout(function(){ webpackDevMiddlewareInstance.close(); }, 10000);
-
invalidate()
- recompile the bundle - e.g. after you changed the configurationvar compiler = webpack(/* see example usage */); var webpackDevMiddlewareInstance = webpackMiddleware(compiler); app.use(webpackDevMiddlewareInstance); setTimeout(function(){ // After a short delay the configuration is changed // in this example we will just add a banner plugin: compiler.apply(new webpack.BannerPlugin('A new banner')); // Recompile the bundle with the banner plugin: webpackDevMiddlewareInstance.invalidate(); }, 1000);
-
waitUntilValid(callback)
- executes thecallback
if the bundle is valid or after it is valid again:var webpackDevMiddlewareInstance = webpackMiddleware(/* see example usage */); app.use(webpackDevMiddlewareInstance); webpackDevMiddleware.waitUntilValid(function(){ console.log('Package is in a valid state'); });