webpack can't parse the webpack module

[fresheneesz]

I don't know if this is expected or not - its not really something i intended, but i thought i'd report it anyway. I had a require('webpack') in the script i was bundling, and when bundling got this:

../~/webpack/package.json
Module parse failed: F:\<omitted>\node_modules\webpack\package.json Line 2: Unexpected token :
| {
|   "name": "webpack",
|   "version": "1.0.1",
|   "author": {
 @ ../~/webpack/lib/Stats.js 77:11-37

[sokra]

You need the json-loader.

Here is webpack compiled by webpack for the browser: http://webpack.github.io/playground/

[dashed]

@sokra Oh man. That's sweet!

[fresheneesz]

I'm confused, why would I need the json-loader to build a bundle that requires webpack? Node.js doesn't require any json-loader to run scripts using the webpack api, right?

That demo is pretty sweet - you should definitely put that front and center on the documentation webpage, and in the git readme. Those really help people decide to use something.

[sokra]

node.js can load .json files.

see webpack/docs#5. The problem is that the playground are not full featured. No chunks, because of the way the iframe is injected. No custom loaders.

[fresheneesz]

So it can, another reason to make the json-loader come standard in webpack I think.

[jhnns]

Well, there are two concepts clashing 😄 . node loads json files out of the box, webpack requires a loader for everything that is not pure JavaScript.

I think node loads json files because node doesn't know anything about loaders. They decided to leave it out after having burned their fingers with require.extensions. But webpack has a powerful loader mechanism which should imho be used for every file that is not pure JavaScript (and, well, JSON is not actually JavaScript 😉). So I think it's ok that webpack requires the json-loader.

[fresheneesz]

As a matter of fact, JSON is pure javascript, as javascript recognizes it verbatim. In my opinion, reducing the impedance mismatch of web vs node.js is the paramount problem webpack solves, and reducing that mismatch to 0 should be the goal. : )

[jhnns]

Anyway, I would be ok with both solutions. 😄

[altano]

My vote is to make this work by default if encountered in an npm package:

var package = require("./package");

so I'm with fresheneesz.

I also don't feel strongly though, and think both are okay.

[sokra]

I added .json as default extension.

I will not make the json-loader default for three reasons:

• It's not backward-compatible: This means it will break all applications that use json files...
• It would be impossible/difficult/hard to understand to use another loader for json files. I. e. the json5-loader.
• It's weird/hard to understand to make all loaders explicit and only the json-loader is default.

[jhnns]

I added .json as default extension

Does it mean that I can require("./package.json")?

[sokra]

This means require("./package") resolve to package.json. You still need the json-loader in the webpack.config.js or --module-bind json

[g-patel]

This means require("./package") resolve to package.json.

@sokra Even though late post here, I can't get it working without adding .json in the require. However, it works when I have have full file name including .json in the require.