Writing a very long article about html-webpack-plugin involves quite a bit of technical information, but I’ll do my best to break it down in a step-by-step manner.
The HTML webpack plugin simplifies the creation of HTML files to serve your webpack bundles. This is especially useful for webpack bundles that include a hash in the filename which changes every compilation. You can let the plugin generate an HTML file for you, have it interpolate the hashes for you, and profit.
Now let’s get into the solution to a common problem you might encounter when using the HTML webpack plugin.
Common Problem
Let’s say you want to inject scripts into the body or head of the HTML. This includes all chunks by default – not what we want.
Solution to the problem
Here’s a fundamental misassumption that only head and body tags can be used for injection. We can have more options by setting the inject option in the HTML webpack plugin configuration.
Now let’s dive into some JavaScript coding to illustrate this in a more practical manner.
new HtmlWebpackPlugin({
inject: 'body',
// Other configurations...
})
This is one way to do it. You can also inject the script into the head like so:
new HtmlWebpackPlugin({
inject: 'head',
// Other configurations...
})
Step-By-Step Explanation of Code
1. ‘inject: body’ This inserts the generated js files into the bottom of the body tag in this particular case we ensure that all files are loaded when we want to start using them.
2. ‘inject: head’ This means that the script will be placed in the head of the HTML.
In other cases, these options may not be enough. For instance, if we have several entry points and want to place different scripts in different places.
Libraries or functions involved
Webpack is a static module bundler for modern JavaScript applications. Webpack takes modules with dependencies and generates static assets representing those modules.
The HtmlWebpackPlugin simplifies the creation of HTML files to serve your webpack bundles. The HtmlWebpack Plugin works by first generating an HTML file, then injecting the webpack-generated scripts into the created HTML file.
- Webpack
- HtmlWebpackPlugin
As you can see, on this journey through html-webpack-plugin we touched on various aspects, from understanding its basic functionality, to solving common problems, diving into the intricacies of the code and highlighting the relevant libraries and functions involved.
