Webpack boilerplate

Features

ES2015/ES2016/ES2017
Npm as a task/build runner
Webpack with tree-shaking and hot module replacement (HMR)
Webpack DLL plugin for faster builds
Load polyfills on demand using dynamic import
Lazy loading (System.import) of (large) libraries that is not needed at application startup
Node Express middleware
Linting with eslint and stylelint
Unit tests with Mocha, Chai, Sinon and JSDom
Integration tests with Node Express server
Acceptance testing with WebdriverIO, Cucumber.js, and Node Express
Code coverage and reporting with Istanbul
PostCSS/css-next/CSS Modules
Self hosting Google Material Icons and Font Roboto
CSS reset using normalize.css
Example application built with HyperApp
Responsive Font Size And Fluid Typography With vh And vw Units
Framework agnostic. No dependencies to frameworks like React or Angular
Uses husky to prevent bad commits

Get Started

Install Node7, Node8 or Node9, preferably using nvm
Optionally install Yarn
CD to your dev directory, e.g. cd ~/dev
Clone this repository: git clone https://github.com/leifoolsen/webpack2-boilerplate.git (or download zip)
CD to project root: cd webpack2-boilerplate
Install dependencies: yarn install or npm install
Build dll: npm run build:dll
Start dev server: npm start
Open a browser at http://localhost:8084

Start coding

Modify package.json, e.g. name, author, description, repository
Rename project directory to reflect package name
Add your own 3'rd party dependencies
Add those 3'rd party dependencies to ./src/vendor.js, or use System.import() to import 3'rd party dependencies on demand
Every time you add or update third party dependenecies, remember to build dll: npm run build:dll

Note: Also remember to add your own repo to package.json

  "repository": {
    "type": "git",
    "url": "https://github.com/<your-git>/<your-project>.git"
  },

Wipe commit history

rm -rf .git
git init
git add .
git commit -m "initial commit"

Add your remote: git remote add origin <ssh_or_https_url>
Open a console (shell) and type: npm start
Open a browser at http://localhost:8084
Start coding

Verify that CSS HMR works

Modify some CSS code, e.g. in ./src/app/styles/base/color.css, modify the background-color property

.primary {
  @mixin primary;
}

Change background color to e.g. red and save

.primary {
  @mixin primary;
  background-color: red;
}

Switch to your browser and click the Colors menu
The box with the primary color should be red
Delete the background-color property and switch back to the browser again
The box with the primary color should have the initial color

Verify that JS HMR works

Switch to your browser and click the Home menu
Click the Ping button and verify that the response is displayed with a date, e.g.
2018-01-05 17:44:24: {"status":200, ..."}
Modify ./src/app/actions/pingServer.js

import request from '../../utils/request';

async function determineTime() {
  const moment = await import('moment');
  return moment().format('YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss');
}
const pingServer = (url) => {
  return request(url)
    .then(response => {
      return determineTime()
        .then(time => {
          return `${time}: ${JSON.stringify(response)}`;
        });
    })
    .catch(err => err);
};
export default pingServer;

Remove date, YYYY-MM-DD, from format and save

async function determineTime() {
  const moment = await import('moment');
  return moment().format('HH:mm:ss');
}

Switch to browser and click the Ping button again
The response should be displayed without a date, e.g.
17:47:24: {"status":200, ..."}

Try the bundle

The bundled code is minified and optimized code ready for deployment to your preferred webserver. Before deployment you can verify that the code behaves as expected by running the following npm commands.

npm run build:prod
npm run server
Open a browser at http://localhost:8000

Webpack DLL plugin

The Dll Plugin lets you pre-build the parts of your code that don't often change (such as third party library code). Add code that should be built by the Dll plugin to vendor.js. Code built by the the Dll plugin does not utilize tree shaking and is therefore only used for development. For a production build, the same vendor.js file is added as a entry in your webpack project for minification and elimination of dead code.

See: OPTIMIZING WEBPACK FOR FASTER REACT BUILDS
See: Optimizing Webpack build times and improving caching with DLL bundles
See: Webpack Plugins we been keepin on the DLL

Lazy loading, System.import()

If you have (large) libraries that is not needed at application startup, you can use lazy loading. Lazy loading (System.import()) is demonstrated in code above.

See: Webpack: Code Splitting - Async
See: Lazy Loading

Polyfills

Add your polyfills to polyfill.js

See: Webpack: Code Splitting - Async
See: WE DON'T NEED YOUR POLYFILLS!
See: Polyfills: everything you ever wanted to know, or maybe a bit less
See: Conditionally load multiple Polyfills using Webpack, Promises and Code Splitting

Running tests

Tests are divided into three categories; unit tests, integration tests and acceptance tests. Unit tests and integration tests uses Moca as a test runner. The acceptance tests uses WebdriverIO as a test runner. Istanbul is used for code coverage and reporting.

Unit tests

The following libraries are used:

Mocha
Chai
Sinon
JsDom headless browser
Istanbul

To run the unit tests type: npm run test:unit

Integration tests

The following libraries are used:

Mocha
Chai
Supertest
ExpressJS
Istanbul

To run the ingtegration tests type: npm run test:it

Acceptance tests

The following libraries are used:

WebdriverIO
WDIO Selenium standalone service
Selenium standalone
Cucumber
Chai
ExpressJS

For now, the (standalone) acceptance tests must be run manually. The only way to ro run standalone acceptance tests on a CI server, is to use a headless browser like PhantomJS (I think). Unfortunatley I have so far had no success running acceptance tests using PhantomJS.

Required steps to run acceptance tests

# yarn, or npm install - just in case
yarn install / npm install

# Make bundle
npm run build:prod

# Fetch actual Seleninum distro
NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED=0 ./node_modules/.bin/selenium-standalone install

# Run acceptance tests
npm run wdio

# Expected output

------------------------------------------------------------------
[chrome #0-0] Session ID: e0bf7b24-2bfa-4053-ad47-1e87d5fe409a
[chrome #0-0] Spec: ~/dev/webpack2-boilerplate/test/features/example.feature
[chrome #0-0] Running: chrome
[chrome #0-0]
[chrome #0-0] Title check
[chrome #0-0]
[chrome #0-0]     Get the title of webpage
[chrome #0-0]       ✓ I open the url "http://localhost:8082/"
[chrome #0-0]       ✓ I expect the title of the page to be "Webpack2 Boilerplate"
[chrome #0-0]
[chrome #0-0]     Click the Ping button
[chrome #0-0]       ✓ I open the url "http://localhost:8082/"
[chrome #0-0]       ✓ I click the Ping button
[chrome #0-0]       ✓ I expect the response to be "pong!"
[chrome #0-0]
[chrome #0-0]
[chrome #0-0] 5 passing (5s)

Chromedriver
According to the WebdriverIO Get Stared guide, the Chromedriver standalone server is required for running Chrome browser tests on a local machine. On latest Ubuntu and OSX I have run the tests without installing the Chromedriver. So far I have not experienced any problems running the tests without the Chrome Driver. If you must install Chromedriver, instructions can be found e.g. here, here and here.

Test coverage

npm run build:prod, then browse ./coverage/lcov-report/index.html, ./coverage/unit/lcov-report/index.html, ./coverage/integration/lcov-report/index.html

e2e tests

e2e tests are not implemented in this boilerplate, but basically they are equal to the integration tests. The main difference is that you use a proxy to connect to a "real" api server before running your client api tests. A sample e2e test using a proxy can be found in the ./test/integration/proxy directory.

To see it in action, run the test:proxy-example script.

Hot Module Reloading, HMR

Read Hot Module Replacement - React, React Hot Loader Getting Started, Tree-shaking with webpack 2 and Babel 6 and http://andrewhfarmer.com/webpack-hmr-tutorial/.

How to use the boilerplate with React

The boilerplate may, with a few modifications, be used with React. More details can be found here and here.

Install required packages

# dependencies
yarn add -E react / npm i -S react
yarn add -E react-dom / npm i -S react-dom

# devdependencies
yarn add -D -E babel-preset-react / npm i -D babel-preset-react 
yarn add -D -E react-hot-loader@next / npm i -D react-hot-loader@next
yarn add -D -E eslint-plugin-react / npm i -D eslint-plugin-react

Add React dependencies to `src/vendor.js`

import 'react';
import 'react-dom';

Modify `.babelrc`

Add "react" to presets and "react-hot-loader/babel" to development plugins.

{
  "plugins": [
    "syntax-async-functions",
    "syntax-dynamic-import",
    "transform-async-to-generator",
    "transform-regenerator",
    "transform-runtime",
    "transform-class-properties"
  ],
  "presets": [
    ["env", {
      "targets": {
        "browsers": ["last 2 versions", "ie >= 11"]
      }
    }],
    "react",
    "stage-0"
  ],
  "env": {
    "development": {
      "plugins": [
        "react-hot-loader/babel"
      ]
    },
    "test": {
    },
    "production": {
    }
  }
}

Modify `.eslintrc`

Add "react" to "plugins"

{
  "plugins": [
    "compat",  // Allow configuration of target browser/s (npm i -D eslint-plugin-compat)
    "react"    // React specific linting rules (npm i -D eslint-plugin-react)
  ],
}

Enable all of the rules that you would like to use

{
  "rules": {
    "react/jsx-uses-react": "error",
    "react/jsx-uses-vars": "error",
  }
}

Modify `webpack.config.babel.js`

entry.app

Add 'react-hot-loader/patch'

app: (!isHot ? [] : [
  './webpack-public-path.js',
  // Put react-hot-loader/patch before webpack-hot-middleware,
  // see: https://github.com/gaearon/react-hot-loader/issues/243
  'react-hot-loader/patch',
  'webpack-hot-middleware/client',
]).concat([
  './styles.scss',
  './index.js'
]),

Create ./src/components/App.js

import React from 'react';

const superStyles = {
  backgroundColor: 'green'
};

const App = () => (
  <div style={superStyles}>
    <h1>Hello React!</h1>
  </div>
);

export default App;

Modify ./src/index.js

import polyfill from './polyfill';
import React from 'react';
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';
import './config/config';
import logger, {LOG_LEVEL} from './logger/logger';
import App from './components/App';

import './styles.scss';

if(window) {
  /**
   * An event handler for the error event.
   * When an error is thrown, the following arguments are passed to the function:
   * @param msg The message associated with the error, e.g. “Uncaught ReferenceError: foo is not defined”
   * @param url The URL of the script or document associated with the error, e.g. “/dist/app.js”
   * @param lineNo The line number (if available)
   * @param columnNo The column number (if available)
   * @param error The Error object associated with this error (if available)
   * @return {boolean}
   * @see https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/API/GlobalEventHandlers/onerror
   * @see https://blog.sentry.io/2016/01/04/client-javascript-reporting-window-onerror.html
   */
  window.onerror = function (msg, url, lineNo, columnNo, error) {
    const err = error || {};
    const detail = {
      name: err.name || msg || '',
      line: lineNo,
      column: columnNo,
      url: url || '',
      stack: err.stack || 'See browser console for detail',
    };

    logger.remoteLogger.log(LOG_LEVEL.error, msg, detail);
    return false;
  };

  /**
   * Flush logger
   */
  window.addEventListener('beforeunload', () => {
    logger.debug('Before unload. Flushing remote logger');
    logger.remoteLogger.flush();
  });
}

const run = () => {
  if (module.hot) {
    // AppContainer is a necessary wrapper component for HMR
    const AppContainer = require('react-hot-loader').AppContainer;
  
    const render = (Component) => {
      ReactDOM.render(
        <AppContainer>
          <Component/>
        </AppContainer>,
        document.getElementById('app')
      );
    };
  
    render(App);
  
    // Hot Module Replacement API
    module.hot.accept('./components/App', () => {
      const NextApp = require('./components/App').default;
      render(NextApp);
    });
  }
  else {
    ReactDOM.render(
      <App/>,
      document.getElementById('app')
    );
  }
};

// Add polyfills
try {
  polyfill()
    .then( () => run()); // Start the app
}
catch(err) {
  console.log('Error loading polyfills:', err); // eslint-disable-line no-console
}

Modify ./src/index.html, e.g.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8">
  <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
  <title>React Webpack</title>
</head>
<body>
<main id="app">

  <!-- Display a message if JS has been disabled on the browser. -->
  <noscript>If you're seeing this message, that means
    <strong>JavaScript has been disabled on your browser</strong>,
    please <strong>enable JS</strong> to make this app work.
  </noscript>

</main>
</body>
</html>

Start coding React

Enjoy your React coding :-)

Complete react-webpack-bolierplate example code can be found here

NPM Scripts

start: run Express sever with Hot Module Reloading (HMR), eslint and stylelint, serving files at http://localhost:8084
test: run unit tests and integration tests
test:watch: run unit tests in watch mode
test:single: run a single test file in watch mode, e.g.
npm run test:single test/unit/logger/logger.spec.js
npm run test:single test/integration/server/server.spec.js
test:pattern: will run tests and suites with names matching the given pattern, e.g.
pattern=logger npm run test:pattern will run only the logger tests
lint: lint according to rules in .eslintrc and .stylelintrc
analyze: run webpack-bundle-size-analyzer to analyze the output bundle sizes
Note: There is a console.log statement at the top of the webpack.config file that must be removed before this script can be run
clean: remove dist and coverage directory
build: bundle the app to the dist dir using development settings
build:prod: bundle the app to the dist dir using production settings
server: run Express sever with the generated bundle, serving files at http://localhost:8000
precommit: husky run command for the git pre-commit hook

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README.md

README.md

Webpack boilerplate

Features

Get Started

Start coding

Verify that CSS HMR works

Verify that JS HMR works

Try the bundle

Webpack DLL plugin

Lazy loading, System.import()

Polyfills

Running tests

Unit tests

Integration tests

Acceptance tests

Required steps to run acceptance tests

Test coverage

e2e tests

Hot Module Reloading, HMR

How to use the boilerplate with React

Install required packages

Add React dependencies to `src/vendor.js`

Modify `.babelrc`

Modify `.eslintrc`

Modify `webpack.config.babel.js`

entry.app

Create ./src/components/App.js

Modify ./src/index.js

Modify ./src/index.html, e.g.

Start coding React

NPM Scripts

Files

README.md

Latest commit

History

README.md

File metadata and controls

Webpack boilerplate

Features

Get Started

Start coding

Verify that CSS HMR works

Verify that JS HMR works

Try the bundle

Webpack DLL plugin

Lazy loading, System.import()

Polyfills

Running tests

Unit tests

Integration tests

Acceptance tests

Required steps to run acceptance tests

Test coverage

e2e tests

Hot Module Reloading, HMR

How to use the boilerplate with React

Install required packages

Add React dependencies to src/vendor.js

Modify .babelrc

Modify .eslintrc

Modify webpack.config.babel.js

entry.app

Create ./src/components/App.js

Modify ./src/index.js

Modify ./src/index.html, e.g.

Start coding React

NPM Scripts

Add React dependencies to `src/vendor.js`

Modify `.babelrc`

Modify `.eslintrc`

Modify `webpack.config.babel.js`