HI WELCOME TO KANSIRIS

Beginner’s Guide To Setup ES6 Development Environment

Leave a Comment
Hello, Web Programmers. Beginner’s Guide To Setup  ES6 Development Environment.
To setup es6 development environment in local machine, we need to understand two tools.
  1. Babel
  2. Webpack
Babel 
Babel is a transpiler that just converts the code from ES6 to ES5 to support all modern browsers.
For more information, please visit this official BabelJS website. https://babeljs.io/

Webpack

Webpack is module bundle for modern javascript web applications. Using webpack, we do not host multiple javascript files. We just host one file for an entire web application.
Let us take an example, for our project we only include only one javascript file.
For More information, please visit this official Webpack website. https://webpack.github.io/docs/
If you are taking this demo, then have already installed the Node.js in your machines.

Setup ES6 Development Environment

Step 1: Create a project folder.

Create an empty project folder.
mkdir js6
Navigate to that directory by typing,

cd js6

Step 2: Create a package.json file.

We need to create a JSON file called package.json
npm init
Your package.json file looks like this.
{
  "name": "js6",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {},
  "author": "Sireesh Kantamaneni",
  "license": "ISC"
}

Step 3: Install webpack globally and locally.

We need to install webpack globally.
For Windows, open a command prompt in administrator mode.
npm install -g webpack
For Linux or Mac.
sudo npm install -g webpack
We need to install webpack locally.
npm install webpack --save-dev
Here, we have used –save-dev flag.
The reason behind is that we need to install this dependency for the development setup, not for production setup.

Step 4: Include bundled file in the HTML page.

Create an index.html file in root folder.
<!-- index.html -->

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <title>ES2015 Environment</title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
Now, include a script tag in your body tag.
<!-- index.html -->

<script src="bundle.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
Create a new directory called app in the root folder.
In that create a javascript file called main.js
For testing write only one line of code in main.js file
//main.js

console.log('Inside main.js');

Step 5: Create a webpack configuration file.

Now, create a webpack configuration file in a root folder named as webpack.config.js
In this file, we need to export all the webpack settings by exporting javascript object.
//webpack.config.js

module.exports = {
    entry: ['./app/main.js'],
    output: {
        filename: 'bundle.js'
    }
};
Here we need some explanations right?
module.exports : It is an object that describes our webpack configuration.
The object contains two properties, which is very basic configuration.
entry: – which represents our entry javascript file for the project. In our case It is  js6 > app > main.js
output: – the output bundled file, which we have included in our main HTML file called bundle.js
We need to update package.json file’s scripts property.
"scripts": {}
We add new properties called “build” and value called “webpack“.
{
  "name": "js6",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "build": "webpack"
  },
  "author": "sireesh kantamaneni",
  "license": "ISC"
}
Run the build command again.
npm run build
It will create a bundled file names as “bundle.js“.
Now open an index.html file in a browser, and you will see in the chrome developer tools,  inside console panel, there is logging by saying
“Hello from main.js.”
Cool!!, we have successfully bundled out main.js file into the bundle.js file, and if you open that file, we can see ES5 code.
Now, change the content of the main.js file and refresh the page.
Console panel output will remain the same.
To overcome this problem.
We need to a package called “webpack-dev-server“.

Step 6: Install webpack development server.

To get webpack-dev-server globally on Linux and Mac.
sudo npm install -g webback-dev-server
To get webpack locally
npm install --save-dev webpack-dev-server
We need to update the package.json file.
"build": "webpack-dev-server"
That’s it!! Now start your webpack by typing
npm run build
Now analyze the terminal, It says that your project will serve on http://localhost:8080
You will see the console panel result that we will get the same thing.
“Hello from main.js“
Now change the main file like “Hello from bundle.js“.
It will recompile automatically, and you can see the changes are reflecting in the browser.

Step 7: Use Babel in our development environment.

Now, we need to configure Babel.js in our webpack environment.
Download some dependencies from NPM.
npm install babel-core babel-loader babel-preset-es2015 --save-dev
It will update our package.json file.
{
  "name": "js6",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "build": "webpack-dev-server"
  },
  "author": "sireesh kantamaneni",
  "license": "ISC",
  "devDependencies": {
    "babel-core": "^6.24.0",
    "babel-loader": "^6.4.1",
    "babel-preset-es2015": "^6.24.0",
    "webpack": "^2.3.2",
    "webpack-dev-server": "^2.4.2"
  }
}

babel-core and babel-loader is the dependency, which transpiles the es6 code to es5
babel-preset-es2015 let us use some advanced feature of ECMA Script in our web applications.
Now, we have to update our webpack.config.js file.

Step 8 : Edit webpack.config.js file.

Updated webpack.config.js file looks like this.
//webpack.config.js

module.exports = {
    entry: './app/main.js',
    output: {
        filename: 'bundle.js'
    },
    module: {
        loaders: [
            {
                loader: 'babel-loader',
                test: /\.js$/,
                exclude: /node_modules/
            }
        ]
    },
    devServer: {
        port: 3000
    }
};
Here we have added module object, which has loaders property.
It will accept an array of loader configuration, like which loader we want to use and which file we have to test with the extension .js and which file we need to exclude fromtranspiling from es6 to es5 like “node_modules” folder.
I  have added one optional attribute called devServer.
It includes a port number on which we need to host our app. by default webpack-dev-serverprovides port 8080.
We can change it and put port 3000.
Please close the server and type below in terminal.
npm run buid

An App will be running on http://localhost:3000/
Our final directory structure will look like this.
Beginner’s Guide To Setup ES6 Development Environment

Step 9: Write ES6 code into our main.js file.

Now test one ECMA Script Feature called Arrow Function
You will have to open a main.js file and write below code.
Beginner’s Guide To Setup ES6 Development Environment
//main.js

let app = (name) => {
    console.log(`hello from ${name}`);
}
app('Sireesh');
You will see in the browser that, it has been updated and in the console, we can see “hello from Sireesh.”
We have built an environment to write ES6 code, and It will be compatible with today’s browser.
This code you can find in my GitHub URL: https://github.com/KrunalLathiya/es6-environment

Possible Errors

  1. First, check your Node and NPM versions
  2. You need to check all of your dependencies version by comparing package.json file to avoid version conflicting.
If you have any questions, please ask in a comment below. I am happy to help you out.

Finally, we have achieved setup es6 development environment in the local machine.

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.