Writing a Scaffold

A scaffold is an ECMAScript Module which exports a yeoman generator based on Scaffolding API. Scaffolds can be used but not limited to initialize a new webpack project, tailored to a specific use case. To view what we are building today, run webpack init webpack-scaffold-demo. This demo will show you how to build your own webpack scaffold. Let's start by creating a file named generator.js.

Quick Start

webpack-scaffold-starter can be used to setup a new scaffold project. To do so, follow the following commands.

mkdir my-scaffold && cd my-scaffold
npm install webpack-scaffold-starter
npx webpack-scaffold
git init # optional

Setup

Before writing a webpack-cli scaffold, think about what you're trying to achieve. Do you want a "general" scaffold that could be used by any project or type of app? Do you want something focused, like a scaffold that writes both your webpack.config.js and your framework code? It's also useful to think about the user experience for your scaffold.

webpack-cli offers interactive experience to customize the output accordingly. For example asking questions like: "What is your entry point?".

Let's create our skeleton. In order for the webpack CLI to detect our options, we have to define some properties in the constructor.

generator.js

const Generator = require('yeoman-generator');

module.exports = class WebpackGenerator extends Generator {
  constructor(args, opts) {
    super(args, opts);
    opts.env.configuration = {
      dev: {}
    };
  }
};

configuration object has to have one property you name (we named it dev in the snippet above). A good practice is to name the underlying property with the name you want to give to your webpack.config.js file for a better indication of what configuration each file has.

Make it interactive

In order for us to interact with the users, we make use of the prompting method yeoman has. In this method, we can get various answers from the user, like asking for entry points or plugins. You can either manually create each object representing a question or you can make good use of our utilities from webpack-scaffold. We are in a good mood today, so let's build a configuration only if the user chooses Pengwings.

const Generator = require('yeoman-generator');
const List = require('@webpack-cli/webpack-scaffold').List;

module.exports = class WebpackGenerator extends Generator {
  constructor(args, opts) {
    super(args, opts);
    opts.env.configuration = {
      dev: {}
    };
  }

  prompting() {
    return this.prompt([
      List('confirm', 'Welcome to the demo scaffold! Are you ready?', ['Yes', 'No', 'Pengwings'])
    ]).then(answer => {
      if (answer['confirm'] === 'Pengwings') {
        // build the configuration
      }
    });
  }
};

Configuring Webpack

So far, we've made an interaction with the user. If you were coding along, great! So how do we proceed from here? Let's try to build a simple webpack configuration that has an entry point, an output, and a context property. For this, we need to create a webpackOptions property on our dev object. This is where entry, output and context is going to be hooked up, later resulting in a webpack.config.js.

Define the webpackOptions property in the constructor to keep your scaffold as clean as possible!

const Generator = require('yeoman-generator');
const List = require('@webpack-cli/webpack-scaffold').List;

module.exports = class WebpackGenerator extends Generator {
  constructor(args, opts) {
    super(args, opts);
    opts.env.configuration = {
      dev: {
        webpackOptions: {}
      }
    };
  }

  prompting() {
    return this.prompt([
      List('confirm', 'Welcome to the demo scaffold! Are you ready?', ['Yes', 'No', 'Pengwings'])
    ]).then(answer => {
      if (answer['confirm'] === 'Pengwings') {
        // build the configuration
      }
    });
  }
};

Dev Configurations

Congratulations! You've now created the base of a webpack-scaffold! Let's now add some more stuff to our future configuration file! We are going to follow good convention, and extract our configuration into another file, named dev-config.js. As this is just regular JavaScript, we can make the module a function, and supply our entry as a parameter for us to build up a configuration file from.

dev-config.js

module.exports = function createDevConfig(answer) {
  let devConfig = {};
};

generator.js

const Generator = require('yeoman-generator');
const List = require('@webpack-cli/webpack-scaffold').List;
const createDevConfig = require('./dev-config');

module.exports = class WebpackGenerator extends Generator {
  constructor(args, opts) {
    super(args, opts);
    opts.env.configuration = {
      dev: {
        webpackOptions: {}
      }
    };
  }

  prompting() {
    return this.prompt([
      List('confirm', 'Welcome to the demo scaffold! Are you ready?', ['Yes', 'No', 'Pengwings'])
    ]).then(answer => {
      if (answer['confirm'] === 'Pengwings') {
        this.options.env.configuration.dev.webpackOptions = createDevConfig(answer);
      }
    });
  }
};

We've now abstracted that part of the code that's probably going to be really big. Let's go ahead and add another question, like asking for an entry point.

const Generator = require('yeoman-generator');
const List = require('@webpack-cli/webpack-scaffold').List;
const Input = require('@webpack-cli/webpack-scaffold').Input;
const createDevConfig = require('./dev-config');

module.exports = class WebpackGenerator extends Generator {
  constructor(args, opts) {
    super(args, opts);
    opts.env.configuration = {
      dev: {
        webpackOptions: {}
      }
    };
  }

  prompting() {
    return this.prompt([
      List('confirm', 'Welcome to the demo scaffold! Are you ready?', ['Yes', 'No', 'Pengwings']),
      Input('entry', 'What is the entry point in your app?')
    ]).then(answer => {
      if (answer['confirm'] === 'Pengwings') {
        this.options.env.configuration.dev.webpackOptions = createDevConfig(answer);
      }
    });
  }
};

Some more configs

Let's look at dev-config.js. We have access to user's answers, use them to assign values to desired configuration properties, in this case - entry. We've also added an output property that has a filename.

String values must be quoted twice. This is to preserve our ability to add other functionality, using only " ", while " 'Mystring' " resolves to a string.

dev-config.js

module.exports = function createDevConfig(answer) {
  let entryProp = answer.entry ? ( '\'' + answer.entry + '\'') : '\'index.js\'';
  let devConfig = {
    entry: entryProp,
    output: {
      filename: '\'[name].js\''
    }
  };
  return devConfig;
};

Run webpack init webpack-scaffold-demo, and you should see scaffold working.

Basic Scaffold

Now that we've got our initial scaffold. Let's add the rest of our options! For the context, let's say we need to use path's join function. For this, we use a single quote string. By default, the current directory is used, but it's recommended to pass a value in your configuration (context). This makes your configuration independent from CWD (current working directory).

module.exports = function createDevConfig(answer) {
  let entryProp = answer.entry ? ( '\'' + answer.entry + '\'') : '\'index.js\'';
  let devConfig = {
    entry: entryProp,
    output: {
      filename: '\'[name].js\''
    },
    context: 'path.join(__dirname, "src")'
  };
  return devConfig;
};

Add more functionality

Now we are ready to add a plugin. For this, let's create an utility for html-webpack-plugin based on the input from the user. Start by adding another question to our prompt.

const Generator = require('yeoman-generator');
const List = require('@webpack-cli/webpack-scaffold').List;
const Input = require('@webpack-cli/webpack-scaffold').Input;
const createDevConfig = require('./dev-config');

module.exports = class WebpackGenerator extends Generator {
  constructor(args, opts) {
    super(args, opts);
    opts.env.configuration = {
      dev: {
        webpackOptions: {}
      }
    };
  }

  prompting() {
    return this.prompt([
      List('confirm', 'Welcome to the demo scaffold! Are you ready?', ['Yes', 'No', 'Pengwings']),
      Input('entry', 'What is the entry point in your app?'),
      Input('plugin', 'What do you want to name your html file?')
    ]).then(answer => {
      if (answer['confirm'] === 'Pengwings') {
        this.options.env.configuration.dev.webpackOptions = createDevConfig(answer);
      }
    });
  }
};

Create string with name

Now, we've got to create a string with our answer. This is how it looks.

module.exports = function createHtmlPlugin(name) {
  return (
    ` new HtmlWebpackPlugin({filename: "${name}.html" }) `
  );
};

We've now created a scaffold with entry, output, context and a plugin. If you're curious on the API, check the API for more info on how to scaffold with regexps, module and other!

Defining scopes

In order for webpack to compile, we've got to import path. For this, we've got to define something called topScope. This is where our code before module.exports is going to, where you can add everything from imports and variables to functions. The syntax is the same as with the plugins, except for that the topScope property must be an array. In topScope you can define and import what's needed for your specific use case.

generator.js

const Generator = require('yeoman-generator');
const List = require('@webpack-cli/webpack-scaffold').List;
const Input = require('@webpack-cli/webpack-scaffold').Input;
const createDevConfig = require('./dev-config');

module.exports = class WebpackGenerator extends Generator {
  constructor(args, opts) {
    super(args, opts);
    opts.env.configuration = {
      dev: {
        webpackOptions: {}
      }
    };
  }

  prompting() {
    return this.prompt([
      List('confirm', 'Welcome to the demo scaffold! Are you ready?', ['Yes', 'No', 'Pengwings']),
      Input('entry', 'What is the entry point in your app?'),
      Input('plugin', 'What do you want to name your html file?')
    ]).then(answer => {
      if (answer['confirm'] === 'Pengwings') {
        this.options.env.configuration.dev.webpackOptions = createDevConfig(answer);
        this.options.env.configuration.dev.topScope = [
          'const path = require("path")',
          'const webpack = require("webpack")'
        ];
      }
    });
  }
};

Configuration nomenclature

We recommend you to name your configuration file something meaningful, like in our case: "penguins". To do it, set the this.options.env.configuration.dev.configName to desired string.

const Generator = require('yeoman-generator');
const List = require('@webpack-cli/webpack-scaffold').List;
const Input = require('@webpack-cli/webpack-scaffold').Input;
const createDevConfig = require('./dev-config');

module.exports = class WebpackGenerator extends Generator {
  constructor(args, opts) {
    super(args, opts);
    opts.env.configuration = {
      dev: {
        webpackOptions: {}
      }
    };
  }

  prompting() {
    return this.prompt([
      List('confirm', 'Welcome to the demo scaffold! Are you ready?', ['Yes', 'No', 'Pengwings']),
      Input('entry', 'What is the entry point in your app?'),
      Input('plugin', 'What do you want to name your html file?')
    ]).then(answer => {
      if(answer['confirm'] === 'Pengwings') {
        this.options.env.configuration.dev.webpackOptions = createDevConfig(answer);
        this.options.env.configuration.dev.topScope = [
          'const path = require("path")',
          'const webpack = require("webpack")'
        ];
        this.options.env.configuration.dev.configName = 'pengwings';
      }
    });
  }
};

About .yo-rc.json

To write the actual configuration, webpack CLI creates a .yo-rc.json file for it to parse the AST. In order for the CLI to understand how to parse the configuration, we need to write to the .yo-rc.json. This is done using the writing lifecycle method built-in by yeoman.

const Generator = require('yeoman-generator');
const List = require('@webpack-cli/webpack-scaffold').List;
const Input = require('@webpack-cli/webpack-scaffold').Input;
const createDevConfig = require('./dev-config');

module.exports = class WebpackGenerator extends Generator {
  constructor(args, opts) {
    super(args, opts);
    opts.env.configuration = {
      dev: {
        webpackOptions: {}
      }
    };
  }

  prompting() {
    return this.prompt([
      List('confirm', 'Welcome to the demo scaffold! Are you ready?', ['Yes', 'No', 'Pengwings']),
      Input('entry', 'What is the entry point in your app?'),
      Input('plugin', 'What do you want to name your html file?')
    ]).then (answer => {
      if(answer['confirm'] === 'Pengwings') {
        this.options.env.configuration.dev.webpackOptions = createDevConfig(answer);
        this.options.env.configuration.dev.topScope = [
          'const path = require("path")',
          'const webpack = require("webpack")'
        ];
        this.options.env.configuration.dev.configName = 'pengwings';
      }
    });
  }
  writing() {
    this.config.set('configuration', this.options.env.configuration);
  }
};

Congratulations 🎉 on completing your first scaffold! If you need help, submit an issue, or reach out on Twitter!