neutrino-dev/packages/neutrino-preset-web

Neutrino Web Preset

neutrino-preset-web is a Neutrino preset that supports building generic applications for the web.

Features

• Zero upfront configuration necessary to start developing and building a web app
• Modern Babel compilation supporting ES modules, last 2 major browser versions, async functions, and dynamic imports
• Webpack loaders for importing HTML, CSS, images, icons, and fonts
• Webpack Dev Server during development
• Automatic creation of HTML pages, no templating necessary
• Hot Module Replacement support
• Tree-shaking to create smaller bundles
• Production-optimized bundles with Babili minification and easy chunking
• Easily extensible to customize your project as needed

Requirements

• Node.js v6.9+
• Yarn or npm client
• Neutrino v4

Installation

neutrino-preset-web can be installed via the Yarn or npm clients. Inside your project, make sure neutrino and neutrino-preset-web are development dependencies.

Yarn

❯ yarn add --dev neutrino neutrino-preset-web

npm

❯ npm install --save-dev neutrino neutrino-preset-web

Project Layout

neutrino-preset-web follows the standard project layout specified by Neutrino. This means that by default all project source code should live in a directory named src in the root of the project. This includes JavaScript files, CSS stylesheets, images, and any other assets that would be available to your compiled project.

Quickstart

After installing Neutrino and the Web preset, add a new directory named src in the root of the project, with a single JS file named index.js in it.

❯ mkdir src && touch src/index.js

This Web preset exposes an element in the page with an ID of root to which you can mount your application. Edit your src/index.js file with the following:

const app = document.createElement('main');
const text = document.createTextNode('Hello world!');

app.appendChild(text);
document.getElementById('root').appendChild(app);

Now edit your project's package.json to add commands for starting and building the application:

{
  "scripts": {
    "start": "neutrino start --use neutrino-preset-web",
    "build": "neutrino build --use neutrino-preset-web"
  }
}

Start the app, then open a browser to the address in the console:

Yarn

❯ yarn start
✔ Development server running on: http://localhost:5000
✔ Build completed

npm

❯ npm start
✔ Development server running on: http://localhost:5000
✔ Build completed

Building

neutrino-preset-web builds static assets to the build directory by default when running neutrino build. Using the quick start example above as a reference:

❯ yarn build
clean-webpack-plugin: /web/build has been removed.
Build completed in 0.779s

Hash: 55c33df4cd1222a03505
Version: webpack 2.2.1
Time: 784ms
                                  Asset       Size  Chunks             Chunk Names
   index.52f2d06086f51d21f9c9.bundle.js  213 bytes    0, 1  [emitted]  index
manifest.c10c6464802bf71a2c3f.bundle.js    1.41 kB       1  [emitted]  manifest
                             index.html  779 bytes          [emitted]
✨  Done in 2.10s.

You can either serve or deploy the contents of this build directory as a static site.

Hot Module Replacement

While neutrino-preset-web supports Hot Module Replacement your app, it does require some application-specific changes in order to operate. Your application should define split points for which to accept modules to reload using module.hot:

For example:

import app from './app';

document
  .getElementById('root')
  .appendChild(app('Hello world!'));

if (module.hot) {
  module.hot.accept('./app');
}

Or for all paths:

import app from './app';

document
  .getElementById('root')
  .appendChild(app('Hello world!'));

if (module.hot) {
  module.hot.accept();
}

Using dynamic imports with import() will automatically create split points and hot replace those modules upon modification during development.

Paths

By default this preset loads assets relative to the path of your application by setting Webpack's output.publicPath to ./. If you wish to load assets instead from a CDN, or if you wish to change to an absolute path for your application, customize your build to override output.publicPath. See the Customizing section below.

Customizing

To override the build configuration, start with the documentation on customization. neutrino-preset-web creates some conventions to make overriding the configuration easier once you are ready to make changes.

By default the Web preset creates a single main index entry point to your application, and this maps to the index.js file in the src directory. This value is provided by neutrino.options.entry. This means that the Web preset is optimized toward the use case of single-page applications over multi-page applications.

Rules

The following is a list of rules and their identifiers which can be overridden:

• compile: Compiles JS files from the src directory using Babel. Contains a single loader named babel.
• html: Allows importing HTML files from modules. Contains a single loader named file.
• style: Allows importing CSS stylesheets from modules. Contains two loaders named style and css.
• img, svg, ico: Allows import image files from modules. Each contains a single loader named url.
• woff, ttf: Allows importing WOFF and TTF font files from modules. Each contains a single loader named url.
• eot: Allows importing EOT font files from modules. Contains a single loader named file.

Plugins

The following is a list of plugins and their identifiers which can be overridden:

• env: Injects the value of NODE_ENV into the application as process.env.NODE_ENV.
• html: Creates HTML files when building. Has various options that can be configured via package.json.
• chunk: Defines chunks for manifest and vendor entry points. Can be configured via package.json.
• hot: Enables hot module reloading.
• copy: Copies non-JS files from src to build when using neutrino build.
• clean: Clears the contents of build prior to creating a production bundle.

Simple customization

By following the customization guide and knowing the rule, loader, and plugin IDs above, you can override and augment the build directly from package.json.

Compile targets

This preset uses babel-preset-env to compile code targeting the last 2 browser versions of major browsers. To change the browser targets from package.json, specify an object at neutrino.options.compile.targets which contains a browserlist-compatible array of browser targets.

Example: Replace the Web preset browser targets with support for browsers with greater than 5% global usage:

{
  "neutrino": {
    "options": {
      "compile": {
        "targets": {
          "browsers": [
            "> 5%"
          ]
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Example: Change support to latest version instead of last 2 versions:

{
  "neutrino": {
    "options": {
      "compile": {
        "targets": {
          "browsers": [
            "last 1 version"
          ]
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Vendoring

By defining an entry point in package.json named vendor you can split out external dependencies into a chunk separate from your application code.

Example: Put lodash into a separate "vendor" chunk:

{
  "neutrino": {
    "config": {
      "entry": {
        "vendor": [
          "lodash"
        ]
      }
    }
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "lodash": "*"
  }
}

HTML files

Under the hood neutrino-preset-web uses html-webpack-template for generating HTML files. If you wish to override how these files are created, define an object in your package.json at neutrino.options.html with options matching the format expected by html-webpack-template.

Example: Change the application mount ID from "root" to "app":

{
  "neutrino": {
    "options": {
      "html": {
        "appMountId": "app"
      }
    }
  }
}

Advanced configuration

By following the customization guide and knowing the rule, loader, and plugin IDs above, you can override and augment the build by creating a JS module which overrides the config.

Compile targets

This preset uses babel-preset-env to compile code targeting the last 2 browser versions of major browsers. To change the browser targets from an override file, specify an object at neutrino.options.compile.targets which contains a browserlist-compatible array of browser targets.

Note: Setting these options via neutrino.options.compile must be done prior to loading the Web preset or they will not be picked up by the compile middleware. These examples show changing compile targets with options before loading the preset and overriding them if loaded afterwards.

Example: Replace the Web preset browser targets with support for browsers with greater than 5% global usage:

module.exports = neutrino => {
  // Using neutrino.options prior to loading Web preset
  neutrino.options.compile = {
    targets: {
      browsers: ['> 5%']
    }
  };

  // Using compile options override following loading Web preset
  neutrino.config.module
    .rule('compile')
    .use('babel')
    .tap(options => {
      options.presets[0][1].targets.browsers = ['> 5%'];

      return options;
    });
};

Example: Change support to latest version instead of last 2 versions:

module.exports = neutrino => {
  // Using neutrino.options prior to loading Web preset
  neutrino.options.compile = {
    targets: {
      browsers: ['last 1 version']
    }
  };

  // Using compile options override following loading Web preset
  neutrino.config.module
    .rule('compile')
    .use('babel')
    .tap(options => {
      options.presets[0][1].targets.browsers = ['last 1 version'];

      return options;
    });
};

Vendoring

By defining an entry point named vendor you can split out external dependencies into a chunk separate from your application code.

Example: Put lodash into a separate "vendor" chunk:

module.exports = neutrino => {
  neutrino.config
    .entry('vendor')
    .add('lodash');
};

HTML files

Example: Change the application mount ID from "root" to "app":

const merge = require('deepmerge');

module.exports = neutrino => {
  neutrino.options.html.appMountId = 'app';
};

Contributing

This preset is part of the neutrino-dev repository, a monorepo containing all resources for developing Neutrino and its core presets. Follow the contributing guide for details.