lektor-webpack-support 0.5

Super simple Lektor plugin that runs a webpack watcher

lektor-webpack-support

This is a plugin for Lektor that adds support for webpack to projects. When enabled it can build a webpack project from the webpack/ folder into the asset folder automatically when the server (or build process) is run with the -f webpack flag.

Enabling the Plugin

To enable the plugin add this to your project file, run this command while sitting in your Lektor project directory:

lektor plugins add lektor-webpack-support

Creating a Webpack Project

Next you need to create a webpack project. Create a webpack/ folder and inside that folder create package.json and a webpack.config.js

webpack/package.json

This file instructs npm which packages we will need. All we need for a start is to create an almost empty file (name and version fields are mandatory but not important for functionality, change them to suit your own needs):

{
  "name": "lektor-webpack",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "private": true
}

Now we can npm install (or yarn add) the rest:

$ cd </path/to/your/lektor/project>/webpack
$ npm install --save-dev webpack babel-core node-sass babel-loader sass-loader css-loader url-loader style-loader file-loader extract-text-webpack-plugin

This will install webpack itself together with babel and sass as well as a bunch of loaders we need for getting all that configured. Because we created a package.json before and we use --save-dev the dependencies will be remembered in the package.json file.

webpack/webpack.config.js

Next up is the webpack config file. Here we will go with a very basic setup that's good enough to cover most things you will encounter. The idea is to build the files from webpack/scss and webpack/js into assets/static/gen so that we can use it even if we do not have webpack installed for as long as someone else ran it before.

var webpack = require('webpack');
var path = require('path');
var ExtractTextPlugin = require('extract-text-webpack-plugin');


var options = {
  entry: {
    'app': './js/main.js',
    'styles': './scss/main.scss'
  },
  output: {
    path: path.dirname(__dirname) + '/assets/static/gen',
    filename: '[name].js'
  },
  devtool: '#cheap-module-source-map',
  resolve: {
    modulesDirectories: ['node_modules'],
    extensions: ['', '.js']
  },
  module: {
    loaders: [
      {
        test: /\.js$/,
        exclude: /node_modules/,
        loader: 'babel-loader'
      },
      {
        test: /\.scss$/,
        loader: ExtractTextPlugin.extract('style-loader', 'css-loader!sass-loader')
      },
      {
        test: /\.css$/,
        loader: ExtractTextPlugin.extract('style-loader', 'css-loader')
      },
      {
        test: /\.woff2?$|\.ttf$|\.eot$|\.svg$|\.png|\.jpe?g\|\.gif$/,
        loader: 'file'
      }
    ]
  },
  plugins: [
    new ExtractTextPlugin('styles.css', {
      allChunks: true
    }),
    new webpack.optimize.UglifyJsPlugin(),
    new webpack.optimize.DedupePlugin()
  ]
};

module.exports = options;

Creating the App

Now we can start building our app. We configured at least two files in webpack: js/main.js and scss/main.scss. Those are the entry points we need to have. You can create them as empty files in webpack/js/main.js and webpack/scss/main.scss.

Running the Server

Now you're ready to go. When you run lektor server webpack will not run, instead you need to now run it as lektor server -f webpack which will enable the webpack build. Webpack automatically builds your files into assets/static/gen and this is where Lektor will then pick up the files. This is done so that you can ship the webpack generated assets to others that do not have webpack installed which simplifies using a Lektor website that uses webpack.

Manual Builds

To manually trigger a build that also invokes webpack you can use lektor build -f webpack.

Including The Files

Now you need to include the files in your template. This will do it:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ '/static/gen/styles.css'|asseturl }}">
<script type=text/javascript src="{{ '/static/gen/app.js'|asseturl }}" charset="utf-8"></script>