Webpack library starter

Webpack based boilerplate for producing libraries (Input: ES6/TypeScript, Output: universal library)

Features

• Webpack 5 based.
• ES6 or TypeScript as a source.
• Exports in a umd format so your library works everywhere.
• Test setup with Jest.

Process

ES6/TypeScript source files
       |
       |
    webpack
       |
       +--- babel
       |
  ready to use
     library
  in umd format

Have in mind that you have to build your library before publishing. The files under the lib folder are the ones that should be distributed.

Getting started

1. Setting up the name of your library

• Open webpack.config.js file and change the value of libraryName variable.
• Open package.json file and change the value of main property so it matches the name of your library.

2. Build your library

• Run yarn install (recommended) or npm install to get the project's dependencies
• Run yarn build to produce minified version of your library.

3. Development mode

• Run yarn dev. This command will generate a non-minified version of your library and will run a watcher so you get the compilation on file change.

4. Running the tests

• Run yarn test

Scripts

• yarn build - produces production version of your library under the lib folder
• yarn build-amd - produces an AMD version that works with RequireJS
• yarn dev - produces development version of your library and runs a watcher
• yarn dev-amd - produces an AMD development version of your library and runs a watcher
• yarn test - well ... it runs the tests :)
• yarn test-watch - same as above but in a watch mode

Readings

• Start your own JavaScript library using webpack and ES6

Misc

An example of using dependencies that shouldn’t be resolved by webpack, but should become dependencies of the resulting bundle

In the following example we are excluding React and Lodash:

{
  devtool: 'source-map',
  output: {
    path: '...',
    libraryTarget: 'umd',
    library: '...'
  },
  entry: '...',
  ...
  externals: {
    react: 'react'
    // Use more complicated mapping for lodash.
    // We need to access it differently depending
    // on the environment.
    lodash: {
      commonjs: 'lodash',
      commonjs2: 'lodash',
      amd: '_',
      root: '_'
    }
  }
}