$ npm i webpack webpack-dev-server webpack-cli -save-dev
Not only bundle, but we will also require hot reloading which is possible using the webpack dev server. Next up we need to add webpack, so we can bundle our app together. So let’s get them added as dependencies into our application using npm. Now for creating a simple React application, we need two main libraries: React and ReactDOM. This is where all the dependencies required to build this application will be mentioned. This will create a starter package and add a package.json file for us. Click on each of those links to know more about the process.
#How to run webpack in node modules windows reactjs code
I will be using VS Code, but feel free to use any code editor you like to get things started.īefore you can do any of this, thought, make sure you have the latest nodeJS and the npm version installed locally on your machine. Thats right, thats how almost all good things start: plain old npm init. Today we will be creating a simple React application but without using the create-react-app CLI. For those of you who have no idea what either of those two things are, ReactJS is a UI library which is very helpful in building intelligent complex UIs, and create-react-app is a CLI tool for setting up or bootstrapping a boilerplate dev setup to make React applications. If you know reactJS, you likely know what create-react-app is. So lets get this rolling… What are we building ? By the end of it, I hope you understand the basics of Webpack. Over the next part part of this article I will take you through the step by step setup of webpack. Then, depending on this graph, it creates a new package which consists of the very bare minimum number of files required, often just a single bundle.js file which can be plugged in to the html file easily and used for the application. In brief, Webpack goes through your package and creates what it calls a dependency graph which consists of various modules which your webapp would require to function as expected. To answer these issues, webpack was created. Developers had to use a lot of helper code called polyfills to make sure that the browsers were able to interpret the code in their packages. Not only was the overall size of the application a challenge, but also there was a huge gap in the kind of code developers were writing and the kind of code browsers could understand. Eventually all of this lead to a situation where we had 4x or 5x he of files in the overall application package. They stated getting bulky, with the introduction of JavaScript modules, as writing encapsulated small chunks of code was the new trend. Websites before were no more just a small package with an odd number of files in them. Therefore, we saw a lot of new libraries and frameworks introduced.Ī few design patterns also evolved over time to give developers a better, more powerful yet very simple way of writing complex JavaScript applications. The entire dev community was involved in a constant quest of improving the overall user and developer experience around using and building javascript/web applications.
But very soon all of this was going to change. html, CSS, and probably one or a few JavaScript files in some cases. But to understand it better we need to go back, way back, to when JavaScript was not the new sexy thing, in those old timey ages when a website was just a small bundle of good old. Either way, I can assure you that after reading this article, you’ll likely feel comfortable enough with the whole webpack situation.Īfter all - necessity is the mother of invention…Ī perfect way to say why webpack exists is the above quote. Add npm script in package.json to run Webpack.Okay, so I assume you have heard of webpack - that’s why you are here, right? The real question is what do you know about it? You might know a few things about it, like how it works, or you might have absolutely no clue.Webpack starts his job from single JavaScript file which is called entry point. We use npm: $ npm init command to create a package. Webpack is separate from React but commonly used in React projects for reasons MattYao mentioned. React doesn't "need" babel or webpack but the library is built on the concept of using ES6 javascript syntax and JSX (essentially HTML in JS). It can handle not only combination and minification of JavaScript and CSS files, but also other assets such as image files (spriting) through the use of plugins. Subsequently, question is, what is the use of Webpack in ReactJS? # Webpack is a popular module bundling system built on top of Node. simply run webpack or webpack -watch from your project folder.
npm run devserver -> will start a server at