WordPress Webpack v5 Workflow

WebPack workflow to kickstart your WordPress projects
This includes common and modern tools to facilitate front-end development and testing and kick-start a front-end build-workflow for your WordPress plugins and themes.

Includes WebPack v5, BabelJS v7, BrowserSync v2, PostCSS v8, PurgeCSS v3, Autoprefixer, Eslint, Stylelint, SCSS processor, WPPot, an organized config & file structure and more.

Quickstart

# 1-- Run the npx script to get the files
npx wp-strap webpack
# 2-- Edit the BrowserSync settings in `webpack.config.js` if you want to utilise it
# 3-- Start your npm build workflow with one of these commands:
yarn dev 
yarn dev:watch
yarn prod
yarn prod:watch

You can also use the npx script with predefined answers to get a quicker start

npx wp-strap webpack "projectName:Your plugin name" "author:The Dev Company" authorEmail:hello@the-dev-company.com url:the-dev-company.com css:Sass+PostCSS "folder:Current folder"

Features & benefits

Styling (CSS)

Minification in production mode handled by Webpack

PostCSS for handy tools during post CSS transformation using Webpack's PostCSS-loader

Auto-prefixing using PostCSS's autoprefixer to parse CSS and add vendor prefixes to CSS rules using values from Can I Use. It is recommended by Google and used in Twitter and Alibaba.

PurgeCSS which scans your php (template) files to remove unused selectors from your css when in production mode, resulting in smaller css files.

Sourcemaps generation for debugging purposes with various styles of source mapping handled by WebPack

Stylelint that helps you avoid errors and enforce conventions in your styles. It includes a linting tool for Sass.

Styling when using PostCSS-only

Includes postcss-import to consume local files, node modules or web_modules with the @import statement

Includes postcss-import-ext-glob that extends postcss-import path resolver to allow glob usage as a path

Includes postcss-nested to unwrap nested rules like how Sass does it.

Includes postcss-nested-ancestors that introduces ^& selector which let you reference any parent ancestor selector with an easy and customizable interface

Includes postcss-advanced-variables that lets you use Sass-like variables, conditionals, and iterators in CSS.

Styling when using Sass+PostCSS

Sass to CSS conversion using Webpack's sass-loader

Includes Sass magic importer to do lot of fancy things with Sass @import statements

JavaScript

BabelJS Webpack loader to use next generation Javascript with a BabelJS Configuration file

Minification in production mode

Code Splitting, being able to structure JavaScript code into modules & bundles

Sourcemaps generation for debugging purposes with various styles of source mapping handled by WebPack

ESLint find and fix problems in your JavaScript code with a linting configuration including configurations and custom rules for WordPress development.

Prettier for automatic JavaScript / TypeScript code formatting

Images

ImageMinimizerWebpackPlugin + CopyWebpackPlugin to optimize (compress) all images using

File types: .png, .jpg, .jpeg, .gif, .svg

Translation

WP-Pot scans all the files and generates .pot file automatically for i18n and l10n

BrowserSync, Watcher & WebpackBar

Watch Mode, watches for changes in files to recompile

File types: .css, .html, .php, .js

BrowserSync, synchronising browsers, URLs, interactions and code changes across devices and automatically refreshes all the browsers on all devices on changes

WebPackBar so you can get a real progress bar while development which also includes a profiler

Configuration

All configuration files .prettierrc.js, .eslintrc.js, .stylelintrc.js, babel.config.js, postcss.config.js are organised in a single folder

The Webpack configuration is divided into 2 environmental config files for the development and production build/environment

Requirements

File structure

├──package.json                  # Node.js dependencies & scripts (NPM functions)
├──webpack.config.js             # Holds all the base Webpack configurations
├──webpack                       # Folder that holds all the sub-config files
│   ├── .prettierrc.js           # Configuration for Prettier
│   ├── .eslintrc.js             # Configuration for Eslint
│   ├── .stylelintrc.js          # Configuration for Stylelint
│   ├── babel.config.js          # Configuration for BabelJS
│   ├── postcss.config.js        # Configuration for PostCSS
│   ├── config.base.js           # Base config for Webpack's development & production mode
│   ├── config.development.js    # Configuration for Webpack in development mode
│   └── config.production.js     # Configuration for Webpack in production mode
├──languages                     # WordPress default language map in Plugins & Themes
│   ├── wordpress-webpack.pot    # Boilerplate POT File that gets overwritten by WP-Pot 
└──assets
    ├── src                      # Holds all the source files
    │   ├── images               # Uncompressed images
    │   ├── scss/pcss            # Holds the Sass/PostCSS files
    │   │ ├─ frontend.scss/pcss  # For front-end styling
    │   │ └─ backend.scss/pcss   # For back-end / wp-admin styling
    │   └── js                   # Holds the JS files
    │     ├─ frontend.js         # For front-end scripting
    │     └─ backend.js          # For back-end / wp-admin scripting
    │
    └── public
        ├── images               # Optimized (compressed) images
        ├── css                  # Compiled CSS files with be generated here
        └── js                   # Compiled JS files with be generated here

What to configure

Edit the translate script in package.json with your project data
- If you use npx wp-strap webpack to get the files then this will be done automatically with you terminal input
Edit the BrowserSync settings in webpack.config.js which applies to your local/server environment
- You can also disable BrowserSync, Eslint & Stylelint in webpack.config.js
The workflow is ready to start, you may want to configure the files in /webpack/ and webpack.config.js to better suite your needs

Work with Sass+PostCSS or PostCSS-only

In webpack.config.js you can choose to work with Sass, and use PostCSS only for the autoprefixer function or go full PostCSS (without sass); In that case sass needs to be configured to postcss.

    projectCss: {
        use: 'sass' // sass || postcss
    }

This gets automatically configured when using the initial setup with npx wp-strap webpack.

Working with PostCSS-only is beneficial when you work with TailwindCSS for example. You can read more about that here: https://tailwindcss.com/docs/using-with-preprocessors#using-post-css-as-your-preprocessor. Using TailwindCSS as a utility-first css framework is great for tons of reasons, but I do believe there are projects where you're better off using Sass(+Bootstrap), though it's a personal preference; therefore I left the ability to change between Sass+PostCSS or PostCSS-only.

When changing this configuration after the npx wp-strap webpack setup, then you also need to change the import rule in assets/src/js/frontend.js & assets/src/js/backend.js to import a .css or .pcss file instead of a .scss file.

// Change
import '../sass/frontend.scss';
// To 
import '../postcss/frontend.pcss';

Developing Locally

To work on the project locally (with Eslint, Stylelint & Prettier active), run:

yarn dev

Or run with watcher & browserSync

yarn dev:watch

This will open a browser, watch all files (php, scss, js, etc) and reload the browser when you press save.

Building for Production

To create an optimized production build (purged with PurgeCSS & fully minified CSS & JS files), run:

yarn prod

Or run with watcher & browserSync

yarn prod:watch

More Scripts/Tasks

# To scan for text-domain functions and generate WP POT translation file
yarn translate

# To find problems in your JavaScript code
yarn eslint 

# To find fix problems in your JavaScript code
yarn eslint:fix

# To find problems in your sass/css code
yarn stylelint

# To find fix problems in your sass/css code
yarn stylelint:fix

# To make sure files in assets/src/js are formatted
yarn prettier

# To fix and format the js files in assets/src/js
yarn prettier:fix

Package.json dependencies

Depedency	Description	Version
	BabelJS
babel-loader	This package allows transpiling JavaScript files using Babel and webpack.	8.2.2
@babel/core	Babel compiler core for the Webpack babel loader	7.12.10
@babel/preset-env	A smart preset that allows you to use the latest JavaScript without needing to micromanage which syntax transforms are needed by your target environment(s).	7.12.11
	Eslint & prettier
eslint	Find and fix problems in your JavaScript code with a linting configuration	7.17.0
eslint-webpack-plugin	Make eslint work with Webpack during compiling	2.4.1
@babel/eslint-parser	Allows you to lint ALL valid Babel code with Eslint	7.12.1
@wordpress/eslint-plugin	ESLint plugin including configurations and custom rules for WordPress development.	7.4.0
prettier	For automatic JavaScript / TypeScript code formatting	2.2.1
eslint-plugin-prettier	Runs Prettier as an ESLint rule and reports differences as individual ESLint issues.	3.3.1
	CSS & PurgeCSS
css-loader	Needed in Webpack to load and process CSS	5.0.1
mini-css-extract-plugin	Webpack normally loads CSS from out JavaScript. Since we're working with WordPress we need the CSS files separately. This will make that happen.	1.3.3
purgecss-webpack-plugin	Scans your php (template) files to remove unused selectors from your css when in production mode, resulting in smaller css files.	3.1.3
	PostCSS & Autoprefixer
postcss	To make use of great tools during post CSS transformation	8.2.4
postcss-loader	Loader to process CSS with PostCSS.for Webpack	4.1.0
autoprefixer	To parse CSS and add vendor prefixes to CSS rules using values from Can I Use.	10.2.1
	If we use Sass+PostCSS
sass	To make Sass work with node	1.32.2
sass-loader	Sass loader for Webpack to compile to CSS	10.1.0
node-sass-magic-importer	To do lot of fancy things with Sass @import statements	5.3.2
	If we use PostCSS-only
postcss-import	To add an import feature like Sass, this can consume local files, node modules or web_modules	14.0.0
postcss-import-ext-glob	Extends postcss-import path resolver to allow glob usage as a path	2.0.0
postcss-nested	To unwrap nested rules like how Sass does it	5.0.3
postcss-nested-ancestors	introduces ^& selector which let you reference any parent ancestor selector with an easy and customizable interface	2.0.0
postcss-advanced-variables	Lets you use Sass-like variables, conditionals, and iterators in CSS	3.0.1
	Stylelint
stylelint	Helps you avoid errors and enforce conventions in your styles	1.32.2
stylelint-scss	Extra stylelint rules for Sass	3.18.0
stylelint-webpack-plugin	Make stylelint work with webpack during compiling	2.1.1
	BrowserSync
browser-sync	Synchronising URLs, interactions and code changes across devices and automatically refreshes all the browsers on al devices	2.26.13
browser-sync-webpack-plugin	Makes it possible to use BrowserSync in Webpack	2.3.0
	Optimize images
image-minimizer-webpack-plugin	Uses imagemin to optimize your images.	2.2.0
imagemin-gifsicle	Needed for the image optimizer to work with GIF	7.0.0
imagemin-jpegtran	Needed for the image optimizer to work with JPEG	7.0.0
imagemin-optipng	Needed for the image optimizer to work with PNG	8.0.0
imagemin-svgo	Needed for the image optimizer to work with SVG	8.0.0
	Webpack
webpack	The Webpack bundler	5.12.3
webpack-cli	Webpack CLI provides a flexible set of commands for developers	4.3.1
webpackbar	Get a real progress bar while development which also includes a profiler	5.0.0-3
	Translation
wp-pot-cli	Scans all the files and generates .pot file automatically for i18n and l10n	1.5.0
	Misc
glob-all	Provides a similar API to glob, however instead of a single pattern, you may also use arrays of patterns. Used to glob multiple files in one of the configuration files	3.2.1

Workflow's Changelog

Documenting this project's progress...

January 15, 2021

refactor: Migrated from NPM to Yarn for speed, install went from 183.281s to 65.76s-90.02s.
fix: Added eslint-plugin-prettier to make yarn work with eslint
refactor: DRY - added config.base.js file to facilitate configurations for both dev/prod

January 14, 2021

feat: Be able to choose to work with Sass+PostCss or PostCSS only
feat: Added npx CLI build script + docs
fix: Make sure eslint & stylelint ignores vendor and testing folders
refactor: Move BrowserSync settings to "projectFiles" constant

January 13, 2021

refactor: Make sourcemap customizable from webpack.config.js

January 12, 2021

feat: Prettier & ImageMinimizerWebpackPlugin
feat: BrowserSync, WP-Pot & WebpackBar
feat: README.md file

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brandonkramer/wordpress-webpack-workflow