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Static HTML Files

When setting up an HTML file to bootstrap a Single Page Application users typically choose between two popular options:

  1. html-webpack-plugin
  2. A static HTML file

This recipe addresses setting up a static HTML file, rather than using a plugin to generate an HTML file to serve a bundle.

Meat and Potatoes

To get started, your webpack configuration should be setup and building successfully. Once that's done, you'll need to create an HTML file somewhere in your project directory structure. Be sure to place the file outside of the output directory.

Let's use the following directory structure as an example:

/the-app
  |_ dist
  |_ js
    |_ app.js
  |_ static
    |_ index.html

Where /the-app/dist is the output webpack output directory. A configuration for this example setup would then resemble the following:

const path = require('path');
const { WebpackPluginServe: Serve } = require('webpack-plugin-serve');
const outputPath = path.resolve('./dist');

module.exports = {
  entry: ['./js/app.js', 'webpack-plugin-serve/client'],
  output: {
    filename: 'bundle.js'
    path: outputPath
  },
  plugins: [
    new Serve({
      static: [outputPath, path.resolve('./static')]
    })
  ]
}

An HTML file for this setup might resemble:

<!doctype>
<html>
  <body>
    <main></main>
    <script src="/bundle.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>

🍰 Dessert

Webpack provides for a multitude of different output configurations, and your needs will likely vary from the examples in this recipe. The important parts to assert are configured correctly are:

  • the static path(s) for `WebpackPluginServe. Any path(s) specified will be be accessible from the website root.
  • the output.publicPath property, which should be set if your build directory is within a directory specified in static
  • the src property for the <script> tag in the static HTML file. This needs to point to where the bundle is located, as defined by all other configuration. In this recipe, we're adding the outputPath as a static directory, so the bundle is served from the website root.