Framework for bulding libraries for both browser and NodeJS

Commands

• npm login
• npm publish - to publish / update a package
• npm unpublish [package_name] - to delete

Framework structure

The purpose of this boilerplate/framework is to quickly enable you to start developing NodeJS and Browser libraries.

It allows you to write code in the form of Typescript that will be compiled in JavaScript es6.

As a starting point, it's assuming that the library will require to send requests using the fetch API in the browser and a custom library like node-fetch in NodeJS.

The output will be placed inside dist folder and it's represented by the following files.

• browser.js the output for browser (this file must be imported for a browser scenario)
• node.js the output for NodeJS (this file must be imported for a NodeJS scenario)
• main.js the common code between them
• *.d.ts - declaration for browser,main and node js

!

The toolchain will not bundle the node_modules libraries. They are ommited using externals: [nodeExternals()] property in webpack.config.js,

As an example for this behavior node-fetch was installed. You can run npm run build:prod and inspect the code from index.js.

!

Source Mapping is enabled in webpack for development environment with cheap-module-source-map option by default.

You can modify it with your desired value

Webpack

Webpack exposes two config objects nodeConfig and browserConfig. Both of them extend generalConfig.

The configuration was inspired from their documentation.

! The library is exported as default

Browser

In a browser scenario where the library will be added using a script tag, then the code will bind to global object window using the name from browserConfig.output.library. In this case MyLibrary.

Testing

For testing, Jest is configured and contains a dummy example.

Jest

npm run test npm run test:watch npm run test:cov

Publishing

• Build before publish and expose the files for a more appealing import - you can add this property inside package.json in scripts object, if you need a hook before you publish your package. This command will be executed when you run npm publish, but before publishing the code.

  "prepublishOnly": "webpack --mode=production && npm run expose",

• Versioning - each time you run npm publish, be sure to update the version in "version": "1.0.0" property inside package.json. Otherwise you won't be able to deploy a new version.

• Ignoring files - use .npmgignore in the same way as .gitignore, but for npm

!

No value for the properties main, types or files was specified in package.json, because here there is no main file, but rather two main files each one for a specific env.

The library must be imported

const Library = require("library/node");

import Library from "library/browser";

Where browser and node match the exact file name that will be created browser.js and node.js.

By default, these files are exported in the dist folder and the root of the module will be ./. Therefore to import them, the following syntax is required require("library/dist/node");. To remove the need to specifying /dist/ the npm run expose command is used which will unwrap the folder dist in the root folder.

To eliminate the need to manually delete files after publishing the package, these commands can be run in an ephemeral volume, such as a CI / CD pipe, or can be added manually in .gitignore