This is a webpack plugin that simplifies 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 either let the plugin generate an HTML file for you or supply your own template (using blueimp templates).
Install the plugin with npm:
$ npm install html-webpack-plugin --save-dev
The plugin will generate an HTML5 file for you that includes all your webpack
bundles in the body using script
tags. Just add the plugin to your webpack
config as follows:
var HtmlWebpackPlugin = require('html-webpack-plugin')
var webpackConfig = {
entry: 'index.js',
output: {
path: 'dist',
filename: 'index_bundle.js'
},
plugins: [new HtmlWebpackPlugin()]
}
This will generate a file dist/index.html
containing the following:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Webpack App</title>
</head>
<body>
<script src="index_bundle.js"></script>
</body>
</html>
If you have multiple webpack entry points, they will all be included with script
tags in the generated HTML.
If you have any css assets in webpack's output (for example, css extracted
with the ExtractTextPlugin)
then these will be included with <link>
tags in the HTML head.
You can pass a hash of configuration options to HtmlWebpackPlugin
.
Allowed values are as follows:
title
: The title to use for the generated HTML document.filename
: The file to write the HTML to. Defaults toindex.html
. You can specify a subdirectory here too (eg:assets/admin.html
).hash
: iftrue
then append a unique webpack compilation hash to all included scripts and css files. This is useful for cache busting.
Here's an example webpack config illustrating how to use these options:
{
entry: 'index.js',
output: {
path: 'dist',
filename: 'index_bundle.js',
hash: true
},
plugins: [
new HtmlWebpackPlugin({
title: 'My App',
filename 'assets/admin.html'
})
]
}
To generate more than one HTML file, declare the plugin more than once in your plugins array:
{
entry: 'index.js',
output: {
path: 'dist',
filename: 'index_bundle.js'
},
plugins: [
new HtmlWebpackPlugin(), // Generates default index.html
new HtmlWebpackPlugin({ // Also generate a test.html
filename: 'test.html',
template: 'src/assets/test.html'
})
]
}
If the default generated HTML doesn't meet your needs you can supply your own blueimp template. The default template is a good starting point for writing your own.
Let's say for example you wanted to put a webpack bundle into the head of your HTML as well as the body. Your template might look like this:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
<title>My App</title>
<script src="{%=o.htmlWebpackPlugin.files.chunks.head.entry%}"></script>
</head>
<body>
<script src="{%=o.htmlWebpackPlugin.files.chunks.main.entry%}"></script>
</body>
</html>
To use this template, configure the plugin like this:
{
entry: 'index.js',
output: {
path: 'dist',
filename: 'index_bundle.js'
},
plugins: [
new HtmlWebpackPlugin({
template: 'src/assets/my_template.html'
})
]
}
Alternatively, if you already have your template's content in a String, you
can pass it to the plugin using the templateContent
option:
plugins: [
new HtmlWebpackPlugin({
templateContent: templateContentString
})
]
The templateContent
option can also be a function:
plugins: [
new HtmlWebpackPlugin({
templateContent: function(templateParams, webpackCompiler) {
// Return your template content synchronously here
}
})
]
Note the plugin will throw an error if you specify both template
and
templateContent
.
The o
variable in the template is the data that is passed in when the
template is rendered. This variable has the following attributes:
-
htmlWebpackPlugin
: data specific to this plugin-
htmlWebpackPlugin.files
: a massaged representation of theassetsByChunkName
attribute of webpack's stats object. It contains a mapping from entry point name to the bundle filename, eg:"htmlWebpackPlugin": { "files": { "css": [ "main.css" ], "js": [ "assets/head_bundle.js", "assets/main_bundle.js"], "chunks": { "head": { "entry": "assets/head_bundle.js", "css": [ "main.css" ] }, "main": { "entry": "assets/main_bundle.js", "css": [] }, } } }
If you've set a publicPath in your webpack config this will be reflected correctly in this assets hash.
-
htmlWebpackPlugin.querystring
: a unique compilation query string (eg:?6682424b6ad9eb93151b
) that can be appended to the URL of included scripts and css for cache busting. Only set ifhash: true
is set in the plugin options. -
htmlWebpackPlugin.options
: the options hash that was passed to the plugin. In addition to the options actually used by this plugin, you can use this hash to pass arbitrary data through to your template.
-
-
webpack
: the webpack stats object. Note that this is the stats object as it was at the time the HTML template was emitted and as such may not have the full set of stats that are available after the wepback run is complete. -
webpackConfig
: the webpack configuration that was used for this compilation. This can be used, for example, to get thepublicPath
(webpackConfig.output.publicPath
).