What would be a web application without styles? Even a small application used on production has defined colors, margins, fonts etc. I have to take them into consideration when bundling it with webpack. This time I will add CSS file to the package.
Table of contents
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Styles in my sample application
Earlier, the application contained only HTML and JS files. This time I add a sample CSS file to show you how it can be handled by webpack. Code changes can be reviewed on GitHub. Here, I will focus only on the most important aspect - I created main.css with colors and other visual changes and added it to styles directory. Normally, I would also add a link tag to the HTML files to include the CSS file but I will not do that as I remember that the HTML files are only templates. The final files should be generated by webpack. I expect webpack to add proper dependencies as well.
Install css-loader and mini-css-extract-plugin
I need two frontend components for what I want to do. The first one is css-loader which is responsible for reading styles from CSS files. The second one is mini-css-extract-plugin which can create CSS file with styles that was read by the previous loader.
The installation is as easy as in the previous parts of the tutorial.
D:\Git\multi-page-webpack-example\src>npm install css-loader --save-dev
npm WARN multi-page-webpack-example@1.0.0 No description
npm WARN multi-page-webpack-example@1.0.0 No repository field.
npm WARN optional SKIPPING OPTIONAL DEPENDENCY: fsevents@1.2.4 (node_modules\fsevents):
npm WARN notsup SKIPPING OPTIONAL DEPENDENCY: Unsupported platform for fsevents@1.2.4: wanted {"os":"darwin","arch":"any"} (current: {"os":"win32","arch":"x64"})
+ css-loader@2.1.0
added 26 packages from 53 contributors and audited 4442 packages in 21.391s
found 0 vulnerabilities
D:\Git\multi-page-webpack-example\src>npm install mini-css-extract-plugin --save-dev
npm WARN multi-page-webpack-example@1.0.0 No description
npm WARN multi-page-webpack-example@1.0.0 No repository field.
npm WARN optional SKIPPING OPTIONAL DEPENDENCY: fsevents@1.2.4 (node_modules\fsevents):
npm WARN notsup SKIPPING OPTIONAL DEPENDENCY: Unsupported platform for fsevents@1.2.4: wanted {"os":"darwin","arch":"any"} (current: {"os":"win32","arch":"x64"})
+ mini-css-extract-plugin@0.5.0
added 2 packages from 2 contributors and audited 4459 packages in 11.185s
found 0 vulnerabilities
If everything goes well (as above), you should see two new entries in package.json.
package.json
------------
{
"name": "multi-page-webpack-example",
"version": "1.0.0",
"description": "",
"scripts": {
"test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
},
"keywords": [],
"author": "",
"license": "ISC",
"devDependencies": {
"css-loader": "^2.1.0",
"html-webpack-plugin": "^3.2.0",
"mini-css-extract-plugin": "^0.5.0",
"webpack": "^4.27.1",
"webpack-cli": "^3.1.2"
}
}
css-loader and mini-css-extract-plugin configuration
webpack.config.js
-----------------
...
const MiniCssExtractPlugin = require('mini-css-extract-plugin');
module.exports = {
entry: {
races: "./main/webapp/scripts/races.js",
results: "./main/webapp/scripts/results.js",
},
output: {
path: __dirname + "/main/webapp/dist/",
filename: "scripts/[name].bundle.js"
},
plugins: [
...
new MiniCssExtractPlugin({
filename: "css/[name].css",
chunkFilename: "[id].css"
})
],
module: {
rules: [
{
test: /\.css$/,
use: [MiniCssExtractPlugin.loader, 'css-loader']
},
],
},
};
css-loader plugin does not require special configuration. The case is different with mini-css-extract-plugin. I use two options:
- filename - specifies the path and name of CSS files to be generated; in my case, it is css directory and the name is the name of the entry point; I have two entry points: races and results so there should be two CSS files generated,
- chunkFilename - defines a pattern for naming chunks; I have only one chunk so it does not do anything complex.
Bundling CSS
Everything is ready for a test. I build a package as usual.
D:\Git\multi-page-webpack-example\src>npx webpack --mode=development
npx: installed 1 in 13.494s
The "path" argument must be of type string
D:\Git\multi-page-webpack-example\src\node_modules\webpack\bin\webpack.js
Hash: b41f0a9b3d7bf61d1d51
Version: webpack 4.27.1
Time: 3442ms
Built at: 2019-01-26 20:47:02
Asset Size Chunks Chunk Names
css/races.css 205 bytes races [emitted] races
css/results.css 205 bytes results [emitted] results
races.html 463 bytes [emitted]
results.html 691 bytes [emitted]
scripts/races.bundle.js 5.16 KiB races [emitted] races
scripts/results.bundle.js 6.07 KiB results [emitted] results
Entrypoint races = css/races.css scripts/races.bundle.js
Entrypoint results = css/results.css scripts/results.bundle.js
[./main/webapp/scripts/races.js] 534 bytes {races} [built]
[./main/webapp/scripts/results.js] 1.36 KiB {results} [built]
[./main/webapp/styles/main.css] 39 bytes {races} {results} [built]
+ 1 hidden module
Child html-webpack-plugin for "races.html":
1 asset
Entrypoint undefined = races.html
[./node_modules/html-webpack-plugin/lib/loader.js!./main/webapp/races.html] 578 bytes {0} [built]
[./node_modules/webpack/buildin/global.js] (webpack)/buildin/global.js 472 bytes {0} [built]
[./node_modules/webpack/buildin/module.js] (webpack)/buildin/module.js 497 bytes {0} [built]
+ 1 hidden module
Child html-webpack-plugin for "results.html":
1 asset
Entrypoint undefined = results.html
[./node_modules/html-webpack-plugin/lib/loader.js!./main/webapp/results.html] 824 bytes {0} [built]
[./node_modules/webpack/buildin/global.js] (webpack)/buildin/global.js 472 bytes {0} [built]
[./node_modules/webpack/buildin/module.js] (webpack)/buildin/module.js 497 bytes {0} [built]
+ 1 hidden module
Child mini-css-extract-plugin node_modules/css-loader/dist/cjs.js!main/webapp/styles/main.css:
Entrypoint mini-css-extract-plugin = *
[./node_modules/css-loader/dist/cjs.js!./main/webapp/styles/main.css] 375 bytes {mini-css-extract-plugin} [built]
+ 1 hidden module
Of course, I can also use the production mode:
npx webpack --mode=production
Whatever mode I use, two CSS files are generated: races.css and results.css.
It is worth to notice that one original file - main.css was transformed to two files. In this case might seem strange but it is a good approach when CSS files differ between pages.
One last item is left - do the generated HTML files have a reference to the generated CSS files?
races.html
----------
<!DOCTYPE html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
<title>Previous races</title>
<link href="css/races.css" rel="stylesheet"><script type="text/javascript" src="scripts/races.bundle.js"></script></head>
<body>
...
Yes, they do.
When I open races.html in the browser, the page is styled and everything works well.
Summary
In this article, I added a simple CSS files to the project and bundled it with webpack.
Source code created in this part is on tutorial/part05-css branch on GitHub.