Node Runtime Webpack Plugin

Webpack development server is not sufficient to run standalone Node.js applications such as Express.js applications. To solve this issue, developers can use Webpack in watch mode webpack --watch with node-runtime-webpack-plugin which handles to restart start script for each build updates with help of watch feature of Webpack.

Install

Install with npm or yarn package managers.

npm install node-runtime-webpack-plugin --save-dev

Usage

• Add plugin to webpack config file: i.e. webpack.config.js

const NodeRuntimePlugin = require("node-runtime-webpack-plugin");

module.exports = {
    entry: './index.ts',
    target: 'node',
    output: {
        path: path.resolve(__dirname, 'out'),
        filename: 'server.js',
        clean: true
    },
    ...,
    plugins: [
        ...,
        new NodeRuntimePlugin({
            scriptToRun: 'server'
        })
    ]

• Add start script for development with package.json file

{
    "name": "express-node-app"
    ...,
    "scripts": {
        ...,
        "start": "webpack build --mode=development --watch"
    }
}

• Run start script and make changes to see bundle restarts

npm start

Issues

To notify us for any issues, you can create new tickets under github issues section.