ahfarmer / Webpack Hmr 3 Ways

HMR 3 Ways

There are 3 ways to use Webpack HMR. This repository contains a minimal example of each way. In order from simplest to most complex:

• Using the webpack-dev-server CLI
• Using the webpack-dev-server API
• Using express and webpack-hot-middleware

Here is a short discussion on how to pick the method you want to use.

• If you want the simplest possible setup then use the webpack-dev-server CLI.

• If you are using a task runner like grunt or gulp you'll want to use the webpack-dev-server API.

• Or similarly, if you have your own node scripts to run webpack, you'll want to use the webpack-dev-server API.

• If you are already using express for your website, or you need to run other services in development, you'll want to use webpack-hot-middleware.

About the Code

The browser javascript code within each directory is the same. There are 3 files:

js/index.js: Entry point. require()s the other 2 files, box-creator.js and math-doer.js.

js/math-doer.js: An extremely simple file to illustrate that dependencies are automatically updated by HMR.

js/box-creator.js: An example of a dependency that has side effects, with an example of how to use module.hot.dispose to handle such side effects.