Obsah

Usually create-react-app is enough to create new React applications, and if you need to have some specific settings - you can always eject and alter its webpack configuration. But sometimes you just need to set up a project from scratch.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to setup Webpack with Babel and React support. We’ll also configure a dev server.

Step 1: Initialize Project

Create new folder webpack-react and open it: 

mkdir webpack-react && cd $_

$_ is a reference to the last argument to the previous command.

Initialize a new npm project: 

npm init -y

This command will create package.json file in your directory. We pass the y option to skip the questions.

Create file src/index.html with following contents: 

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8" />
  <title>How to set up React, Webpack, and Babel</title>
</head>
<body>
  <div id="root">
    <!-- Mounting point for your application -->
  </div>
</body>
</html>

Step 2: Set Up Webpack

Install webpack, webpack-cli, webpack-dev-server, html-webpack-plugin and html-loader as dev dependencies: 

npm i webpack webpack-dev-server html-webpack-plugin --save-dev

Here’s why they are needed:

Create webpack.config.js with following content: 

const HtmlWebPackPlugin = require("html-webpack-plugin");
const path = require('path');

module.exports = {
entry: "./src/App.js",
output: {
  path: path.resolve(__dirname, 'dist'),
  filename: 'bundle.js',
},
plugins: [new HtmlWebPackPlugin({ template: "./src/index.html" })]
};

Add build and start commands to scripts section of package.json: 

"scripts": {
"build": "webpack --mode production",
"start": "webpack-dev-server --open --mode development",
}

Step 3: Set Up Babel

Install Babel dependencies: 

npm i @babel/core babel-loader @babel/preset-env @babel/preset-react --save-dev

We’ve installed babel and two presets here:

@babel/preset-react to compile JSX down to Javascript @babel/preset-env to compile Javascript ES6 code down to ES5 Create .babelrc with following contents: 

{
"presets": ["@babel/preset-env", "@babel/preset-react"]
}

Add babel-loader to your webpack configuration: 

const HtmlWebPackPlugin = require("html-webpack-plugin");
const path = require('path');

module.exports = {
entry: "./src/App.js",
output: {
  path: path.resolve(__dirname, 'dist'),
  filename: 'bundle.js',
},
module: {
  rules: [
    {
      test: /\.(js|jsx)$/,
      exclude: /node_modules/,
      use: {
        loader: "babel-loader"
      }
    }
  ]
},
plugins: [new HtmlWebPackPlugin({ template: "./src/index.html" })]
};

Step 4: Set Up React

Install React dependencies: 

npm i react react-dom

react - provides us with API to work with components react-dom - allows to render to HTML DOM

Create file src/App.js with following code: 

import React from "react"
import ReactDOM from "react-dom"

const App = () => (
<>
  <h1>Hello React</h1>
  <p>Minimal React configuration.</p>
</>
)

ReactDOM.render(<App />, document.getElementById("root"))

Step 5: Run The App

Start webpack-dev-server by running npm start: 

npm start

It should open a browser window and you should see this: