Simple Webpack boilerplate/example

Example of basic Webpack config for a simple website. Guide: here

Install all packages:

$ npm install

Run webpack

$ npm run build

Done! Open index.html in browser for a cat image.

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Notice about production mode and postcss.config.js

In postcss.config.js there is a check for process.env.NODE_ENV variable. The thing is even if you set Webpack mode to production it won't automatically change Node environment variable.

The simplest way to configure this is to install cross-env package:

$ npm install --save-dev cross-env

Then just add another npm script in package.json for production mode:

"scripts": {
  "build": "webpack --config webpack.config.js",
  "build-production": "cross-env NODE_ENV=production webpack --config webpack.config.js"
}

Now when you run npm run build-production the process.env.NODE_ENV variable will be production and postcss.config.js check is going to work:

if(process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production') {
    module.exports = {
        plugins: [
            require('autoprefixer'),
            require('cssnano')
        ]
    }
}

From Webpack documentation: Technically, NODE_ENV is a system environment variable that Node.js exposes into running scripts. It is used by convention to determine dev-vs-prod behavior by server tools, build scripts, and client-side libraries. Contrary to expectations, process.env.NODE_ENV is not set to "production" within the build script webpack.config.js. Thus, conditionals like process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production' ? '[name].[hash].bundle.js' : '[name].bundle.js' within webpack configurations do not work as expected.