Nodemon Webpack Plugin

Uses Nodemon to watch and restart your module's output file (presumably a server), but only when webpack is in watch mode (ie, --watch).

Saves the need for installing, configuring and running Nodemon as a separate process.

Installation

npm install nodemon-webpack-plugin --save-dev

Usage

const NodemonPlugin = require('nodemon-webpack-plugin'); // Ding

module.exports = {
  entry: './src/server.js',
  output: {
    path: path.resolve('./dist'),
    filename: 'server.js',
  },
  plugins: [
    new NodemonPlugin(), // Dong
  ],
};

Then:

$ webpack --watch

Modes

Zero-config mode

new NodemonPlugin();

Will watch and restart the output file.

With config

Provide a Nodemon config object, like so:

new NodemonPlugin({
  // If using more than one entry, you can specify
  // which output file will be restarted.
  script: './dist/server.js',

  // What to watch.
  watch: path.resolve('./dist'),

  // Arguments to pass to the script being watched.
  args: ['demo'],

  // Node arguments.
  nodeArgs: ['--debug=9222'],

  // Files to ignore.
  ignore: ['*.js.map'],

  // Extensions to watch.
  ext: 'js,njk,json',

  // Unlike the cli option, delay here is in milliseconds (also note that it's a string).
  // Here's 1 second delay:
  delay: '1000',

  // Detailed log.
  verbose: true,
});

Example output

Hash: 1c0ed85f7670873d6269
Version: webpack 5.0.0-beta.4
Time: 42ms
Built at: 2019-11-12 23:51:57
    Asset      Size
server.js  2.41 KiB  [emitted]  [name: main]
Entrypoint main = server.js
./tmp/server.js 285 bytes [built]
    + 2 hidden modules

[nodemon] restarting due to changes...
[nodemon] starting `node tmp/dist/server.js`