My Webpack Generator

A utility for generate webpack configs with common settings

About

This utility will create a webpack config that should function as a drop-in for any Javascript or TypeScript project.

It features:

Synthetic default imports (TypeScript)
Project root alias (^)
Type checking in separate worker
Transpiling from ES6+ (and React) to target browsers
Polyfilling ES6+ features

Installation

# with npm 
npm i my-webpack-generator -S
# with yarn 
yarn add my-webpack-generator

Install peer dependencies (TypeScript must be at least version 2):

npm i typescript@2 webpack-cli@3 webpack@4 @babel/polyfill@7 -S

Setup

Creating your config file

Create a file called index.js inside config/webpack and add the following contents, adjusting options as desired.

This will bundle your index.ts file and all dependencies into a bundle.js in the static/build/js directory.

config/webpack/index.js

const myWebpackGenerator = require("my-webpack-generator");
 
module.exports = myWebpackGenerator({
  // required
  mode: process.NODE_ENV || "development",
  input: {
    bundle: "./static/src/ts/index.ts"
  },
  outDir: "./static/build/js",
  tsconfig: "./tsconfig.dist.json",
  publicPath: '/',
  resolve: {
      ext: ["js", "ts", ...],
      modules: ["static", "node_modules", ...],
  },
 
  // optional
  omitSourceMap: false,
  isServer: false,
  plugins: [
      // by default this already have plugins packed with the generator for analyzer, hot module etc..
      // you can add your own here if you want
      // eg:
      // new CopyPlugin([
      //     {
      //         from: 'static/src/locales',
      //         to: path.join('static/build', 'locales'),
      //         ignore: '*.missing.json',
      //     },
      // ]),
  ],
  loaders: [
    // by default this already have babel, typescript, css, postcss, svg, fileloader
    // you can add your own loader here if you want..
    // eg:
    // {
    //   test: /\.(js|jsx|ts|tsx|mjs)$/,
    //   exclude: /node_modules/,
    //   loader: require.resolve('babel-loader'),
    // }
  ],
  env: {
    NODE_ENV: "production"
  }
});

If you require multiple bundles you can supply more than 1 entry in input. Files will be created in the outDir with names corresponding to the keys in your input object.

The following generator will create static/build/js/frontend.js and static/build/js/admin.js.

config/webpack/index.js

const myWebpackGenerator = require('my-webpack-generator')
 
module.exports = myWebpackGenerator({
    input: {
        frontend: './static/src/ts/index.ts',
        admin: './static/src/ts/admin.ts',
    },
    outDir: './static/build/js',
    tsconfig: './tsconfig.dist.json',
    env: {
        NODE_ENV: 'production',
    },
})

If you require multiple bundles, but your source files do not both have the same parent directory, you will have to manually supply a rootDir option in order to use the root dir alias (^) e.g.

{
  input: {
    frontend: './src/frontend/index.ts',
    admin: './src/admin/index.ts'
  },
  rootDir: './src'
}

If you require multiple generators to differentiate between client bundler and server bunder, you can add isServer flag.

{
    isServer: true
}

Browser support

Create a .browserslistrc file in the root of your project and add the following contents, adjusting as desired.

This file is used by webpack, and other tools such as autoprefixer to make our code compatible with the browsers we want to support.

.browserslistrc

last 10 Chrome versions
last 10 Firefox versions
last 10 Edge versions
last 10 iOS versions
last 10 Android versions
last 10 Opera versions
last 10 Safari versions
last 10 ExplorerMobile versions
Explorer >= 9

TypeScript base config

Create a tsconfig.json in the root of the project and add the following contents, adjusting include, paths, and typeRoots as needed.

This will contain all of our base TypeScript config.

By default allowJs is set to false. If your project contains Javascript you should set this to true.

You may enable type checking on Javascript files by setting checkJs to true. This can be useful if migrating a Javascript project to TypeScript.

allowSyntheticDefaultImports and esModuleInterop allow us to import modules that don't have default exports as if they did, in TypeScript, so that we can be consistent across Javascript and TypeScript projects. E.g. import React from 'react'; as opposed to import * as React from 'react';

tsconfig.json

Build scripts

Add the following scripts to your package.json.

package.json

{
    "scripts": {
        "start": "my-webpack-generator start",
        "build": "my-webpack-generator build"
    }
}

$ my-webpack-generator start
# start dev mode, by default the port will be 8500 
# you can visit http://localhost:8500 to start working on your project 
 
$ my-webpack-generator build
# bundle your project

As for now, the generator script require 2 generators (client and server) to run the compilers..

TODO:

License

MIT.