handmade-livereload-webpack-plugin

A Webpack plugin that allows pages to be automatically reloaded without the DevServer.

This is a very simple Webpack plugin that allows to reload web pages while developing, without the need to set up the DevServer. This reduces configuration differences between production and development. It uses ws. It's a development only module.

How it works

This module is composed by 2 little components:

• the webpack plugin itself, that every time the compiler done event is emitted, sends a ws event called RELOAD
• a script, to be injected in the involved web pages, that is listening for the WebSocket message event with event.data === "RELOAD" and reacts reloading the page by doing window.location.reload()

Install

yarn add handmade-livereload-webpack-plugin -D

Usage

In the webpack configuration file, it must be first initialized with two mandatory keys port and host and one optional key delay (in milliseconds).

// webpack.config.js file
var HandmadeLiveReload = require("handmade-livereload-webpack-plugin")({
    port: 1234,
    host: "localhost",
    delay: 100 // emit the RELOAD event 100 ms after the webpack `done` hook
});

The handmade-livereload instance in an object with 2 keys:

1. the plugin key is the plugin itself that can be added to the webpack plugins (if not production):

   // webpack.config.js file
   const IS_PROD = process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production' ? true : false;
      
   if (!IS_PROD) {
      plugins.push(new HandmadeLiveReload.plugin());
   }

2. the path_to_client keys is just a string with the absolute path to the js source file that can be added to the webpack entries in order to be compiled:

   // webpack.config.js file
   if (!IS_PROD) {
     entry: {
       "handmade_live_reload": HandmadeLiveReload.path_to_client
     }
   }

   The handmade_live_reload.js compiled script have to be added to the involved web pages; using the HTML Webpack Plugin:

   // webpack.config.js file
   new HtmlWebpackPlugin({
      chunks: ['app', 'handmade_live_reload']
   })

Thanks to @pmwmedia for the Typescript types definitions!

License

MIT