Tip
This tutorial covers Webpack 3 But don't worry! The vast majority of the concepts are still the same. So, if you want to learn Webpack & module loading, you're still in the right place. The biggest differences are in the CommonsChunkPlugin area.
In JavaScript, if you're still manually including each JavaScript file you depend on with a script tag... there's a better way! ES6 introduced the concept of modules: the ability (finally!) to isolate our JavaScript into small components that live in different files (like we do with classes in JavaScript).
But, to get this to work on the web, we need some help. We need something that's able to read our imports and aggregate everything we need into a single JavaScript file. We need webpack:
- Using npm... and then yarn for package management
- Webpack setup: package all modules into a single file
- Calling Babel from webpack via a loader
- Webpack dev tools for fast development
- Webpack Hot Reloading!?
- Handling multiple files ("entry points")
- Using Uglify and prepping for production
- Cache-busting with hashed filenames
- CommonsChunkPlugin: package common modules together
- Loading & Packaging CSS/SCSS & images form JavaScript!?
And most importantly: become empowered to (finally) write organized JavaScript!
