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meteor-webpack-react

This is a Meteor project skeleton where the client (in React) and server get built by Webpack. In dev mode, webpack-dev-server is used with react-transform. There are a bunch of run and build scripts to make things more convenient.

Meteor's builtin ES2015 support doesn't allow you to import(/require), but with this project you can use all ES2015/ES7 features supported by Babel/corejs/regenerator on the client and server today, thanks to Webpack. There are even source maps on the server thanks to https://github.com/evanw/node-source-map-support!

There is a port of the Meteor simple-todos tutorial to this stack on the simple-todos branch.

Advantages of packaging with Webpack instead of Meteor

  • require/ES2015 import let you avoid Meteor global variables/load order issues
  • react-transform reloads React components without reloading the entire page when you make changes
  • If you require your styles with Webpack, it will also reload them without reloading the entire page when you make changes to them
  • Using an npm module in the browser is as simple as npm install and require
    • This puts a large part of the React ecosystem (which revolves around Webpack/npm) at your fingertips
  • Other Webpack loaders are great too, for example:
    • you can break up your CSS into one file per React component, and then require them in your JSX files
    • or if you want to use Sass, you can require the Sass files
    • or you can use url-loader to require an image file and get a URL to stick in an <img> tag
  • If you use Webpack for your server code too, both the server and the client can require shared code. This way you can avoid creating global variables for Meteor collections or anything else

How it works

The dev.js, prod.js, and deploy.js scripts will run Webpack, and symbolically link the generated bundles into the meteor_core directory.

In prod mode, meteor_core gets the webpack client and server bundles via the soft links meteor_core/client/client.bundle.js and meteor_core/server/server.bundle.js. Two instances of webpack --watch are running, one to make the client bundle and one to make the server bundle.

In dev mode, both webpack-dev-server and meteor_core run simultaneously on different ports (9090 and 3000, respectively), and a webpack --watch is also running to compile and output the server code. A script in meteor_core/client/loadClientBundle.html inserts a <script> tag linking to the bundle from webpack-dev-server via port 9090 on the page's host. (It's a bit weird I know, but one can't have a relative URL to a different port, and just putting a script tag to http://localhost:9090/... wouldn't work if you're testing on separate device from your dev box).

Windows note

meteor_core/client/client.bundle.js is a soft link to webpack/assets/client.bundle.js.
(Similarly for the server bundle.) I don't know if the soft link will work on Windows. If not, you can just copy the bundle in, but make sure to rename it to main.js so that Meteor loads it after everything else.

Requirements

There have been dependency issues with old versions of Node and NPM. Please try at least Node v0.10.36 and npm v1.4.28 before repording any issues about missing dependencies.

Running (dev mode)

Note: make sure you are forwarding port 9090 (as well as the Meteor port) if you want to test on other devices via LAN.

> npm install
> node dev.js

Make sure to wait for Meteor to say it's listening, for the client webpack-dev-server and server webpack --watch to print out module/bundle info. The site won't work until all are ready.

Debugging/Profiling Server (dev mode)

> npm install -g node-inspector
> npm install
> node debug.js

Then visit http://127.0.0.1:8080/debug?port=5858 in your browser.

Running (prod mode)

This runs the app as if it were in production, but it's still watching your files for changes. You can Ctrl-C after it's finished starting up and use ./met deploy, though.

> npm install
> node prod.js

Make sure to wait for Meteor to say it's listening, and for the client and server webpack --watch processes to print out module/bundle info. The site won't work until all are ready.

Deployment

You can set the project name in projectName.js. It defaults to the project folder name.

There is a deployment script that supports several common options:

node deploy.js meteor.com

The usual basic meteor.com deploy

node deploy.js modulus

Uses modulus (make sure to go into the deploy script and replace your_app_proj_name with a real value

node deploy.js mup

See deploy.js for some additional hints

node deploy.js demeteorizer

Builds with demeteorizer

Meteor Settings

Put your settings in settings/devel.json & settings/prod.json and they will automatically load when running in development, production and build modes.

Running Meteor Commands

As a convenience you can run ./met in the root directory to run the meteor command. However you can still cd meteor_core and then run meteor from that directory as well.

./met  --version
./met search simple-schema

Acknowledgements

(if I've forgotten anyone let me know!)

Thanks to:

  • @AdamBrodzinski- for a lot of contributions (esp. deployment) and promotion
  • Luigi Maselli (@grigio) - for writing the first scripts and showing me how to deal with the Meteor vs. ES2015 Number polyfill issue
  • @jbbr - for presenting good workarounds for several issues