Parcel plugin that creates a precaching serviceworker

The plugin is configurable by adding a precachingSW entry to your package.json file.

  "precachingSW": {
    "bypass": false,
    "allowed": [
      "js",
      "css",
      "map",
      "html"
    ],
    "additional": [],
    "offlineUrl": "/offline.html",
    "fileName": "sw.js",
    "outDir": "./"
  },

• bypass → When set to true no serviceworker is created. Defaults to false.
• allowed → Array of file extensions that will be added to the cache. Defaults to an array containing the following extensions:
  • css
  • js
  • woff2
  • svg
  • ico
  • png
  • webmanifest
• additional → Array containing additional files that must be added to the cache.
• offlineUrl → Url of the offline html file, this file will be added to the cache as well. Defaults to offline.html.
• fileName → The name of the file that holds the generated serviceworker. Defaults to sw.js.
• outDir → The path to the directory where the serviceworker file will be saved to. Defaults to ./.

Example

In the example folder you'll find a very basic example of how to use and configure this plugin. To run the example cd into the example folder and run npm i. After all dependencies are installed run npm run start. Now parcels bundles the example app and after bundling it generates a serviceworker file. Then the app starts at localhost:1234.

In the package.json file you see that the plugin is added to the devDependencies. We are using file:.. here so the local version of the plugin will be installed; this is handy if you want to tinker a bit with the plugin code. In your real-life project it will look something like ^0.0.2.

Also in the package.json file you see the precachingSW entry; just play around with the parameters to get a grip on how they work.

The example project itself, and thus the project for which the plugin generates a precaching serviceworker is fairly simple: it contains an index.html that embeds a stylesheet (app.css) and a javascript file (app.js). In the stylesheet a background image is applied to the body; because the jpeg extension is in the allowed array, you can see in the generated serviceworker file that the background image gets cached as well.

Building the example using a Node script

In some cases you need to create multiple bundles and these bundles may require different settings. Take a look at the build.js script inside the example folder. This script creates 2 bundlers by script:

  const bundlerJs = new Parcel('app.js', config);
  const bundlerHtml = new Parcel('index.html', config);

The config object you see above is the Parcel bundler configuration object and additional entries get stripped off when the bundler bundles the files. So we need find another way to pass per-bundle configurations to the precaching plugin.

For this we use the bundle.entryAsset.id, this is the name of the file you pass as first argument to the Parcel constructor. So in our case we have the ids app.js and index.html.

By using this id as an extra entry to the precachingSW object every bundle can have its own configuration

  "precachingSW": {

    // generic settings

    "bypass": false,
    "allowed": [
      "js",
      "css",
      "map",
      "jpeg",
      "html"
    ],
    "additional": [],
    "offlineUrl": "/offline.html",
    "fileName": "sw.js",
    "outDir": "./",

    // bundle specific settings

    "index.html": {
      "bypass": true
    },
    "app.js": {
      "fileName": "javascript-sw.js",
      "allowed": [
        "js",
        "map"
      ]
    }
  }

Please note that bundle specific settings will be merged with the generic settings. For instance the second bundle specific entry app.js uses the values set in the generic settings for outDir, offlineUrl and so on, but overrules both fileName and allowed. Thus the resulting settings of the app.js serviceworker will become:

    "bypass": false,
    "allowed": [
      "js",
      "map"
    ],
    "additional": [],
    "offlineUrl": "/offline.html",
    "fileName": "javascript-sw.js",
    "outDir": "./",

Use it in your project

Run:

npm i -D parcel-plugin-precaching-sw

or:

yarn add -D parcel-plugin-precaching-sw

Then optionally add settings to your package.json file.

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Background image from: https://www.pexels.com/