Esbuild-wrapper NPM

A mostly unopinionated configuration wrapper for esbuild's build API, and a really fast way to get started with a new project.

The quickest way to get started:

cd my-new-project
npx esbuild-wrapper generate

This will ask you a few questions before scaffolding out a project in the current working directory. When it's done, take a look at the generated package.json and esbw.config.js to see how things fit together. Run it again with different prompt answers to get a feel for what it's doing.

What you get:

Four operating modes: build, run, watch and serve.
A simple way to define multiple output targets with an intuitive configuration inheritance hierarchy for each of these run modes.
Async beforeAll and afterAll hooks for all operating modes (build, watch, run and serve) which are particularly useful for doing things like CSS preprocessing and copying static assets. Use esbuild-wrapper generate and create a browser project and select TailwindCSS when prompted for an example of exactly this.

Create an esbw.config.js that fulfills the ESBWConfig interface:

export interface StagedBuildOptions extends BuildOptions {
  /** Called before all artifacts are built. */
  beforeAll?: () => Promise<void>;
  /** Called after all artifacts are built. */
  afterAll?: () => Promise<void>;

  /**
   * Array of `artifactName`s. If defined, only these artifacts
   * will be built. If not defined, all artifacts are built.
   *
   * For example, you may only need to build one artifact during
   * `serveMode` or `watchMode`, but during `buildMode`, build all artifacts.
   */
  build?: string[];

  /**
   * Applicable to 'run' mode.
   * What file to run after building all outfiles.
   */
  runfile?: string;

  /**
   * Applicable to all modes except 'buildMode'.
   * Accepts regular expressions.
   * Files that pattern match trigger rebuild.
   */
  watchPaths?: string[];
}

export interface ESBWConfig {
  /**
   * Least-specific BuildOptions.
   * These are spread to all defined output artifacts.
   */
  artifactsCommon?: BuildOptions;

  /**
   * Artifact-specific BuildOptions.
   * 
   * Takes priority over `artifactsCommon` BuildOptions.
   * Object key is an arbitrary "artifactName" that can be used
   * as an artifact reference by things like 'server'.
   */
  artifacts?: {
    [artifactName: string]: BuildOptions;
  };

  /**
   * BuildOptions applied to all artifacts when building
   * with `esbuild-wrapper build`,
   * 
   * Takes priority over artifacts[artifactName].
   */
  buildMode?: StagedBuildOptions;

  /**
   * BuildOptions applied to all artifacts when serving
   * with `esbuild-wrapper serve`,
   * 
   * Takes priority over artifacts[artifactName].
   */
  serveMode?: StagedBuildOptions & {
    index?: string;
    injectArtifacts?: string[];
    port?: number;
  }

  /**
   * BuildOptions applied to all artifacts when watching
   * with `esbuild-wrapper watch`,
   * 
   * Takes priority over artifacts[artifactName].
   */
  watchMode?: StagedBuildOptions;

  /**
   * BuildOptions applied to all artifacts when watching
   * with `esbuild-wrapper run`,
   *
   * Accepts a `runfile` which is a path to a file that
   * will be executed after a rebuild.
   * 
   * Takes priority over artifacts[artifactName].
   */
  runMode?: StagedBuildOptions;
}

Configuration hierarchy

artifactsCommon -> artifacts -> serve/run/build/watchMode

artifactsCommon is of type BuildOptions. The configuration defined here is applied to all defined artifacts in artifacts.
artifacts is an object of shape { [artifactName: string]: BuildOptions }, and these configurations are prioritized over the ones defined in artifactsCommon.
Finally, each mode accepts a StagedBuildOptions which is even higher priority than the configurations defined in artifacts.

A basic config when creating for the browser might look like this:

// esbw.config.js
export default {
  artifacts: {
    main: {
      platform: "browser",
      bundle: true,
      format: "esm",
      entryPoints: ["./src/index.ts"],
      outfile: "./dist/index.js",
     },
  },
  serveMode: {
    index: "public/index.html",
    injectArtifacts: ["main"],
    build: ["main"],
  },
  buildMode: {
    minify: true,
    minifyWhitespace: true,
    sourcemap: false,
  },
}

Because this is a fairly simple project with only one defined output artifact, there's no need to define an artifactsCommon.

The serveMode object optionally defines an html entrypoint where built artifacts defined by injectArtifacts will be injected. serveMode.build is an array of artifacts that should be built whenever changes are made.

Here's a slightly more involved configuration for a browser project that uses a custom JSX pragma, where esbuild shims the import for the pragma into each outfile file automatically.

// esbw.config.js
import { readFileSync } from "fs";
import path from "path";

const pkg = JSON.parse(readFileSync(path.resolve("./package.json")));

export default {
  artifactsCommon: {
    platform: "browser",
    bundle: true,
    loader: { ".ts": "tsx" },
    inject: ["./pragma-shim.js"],
    jsxFactory: "h",
    jsxFragment: "Fragment",
    entryPoints: ["./src/index.ts"],
  },
  artifacts: {
    esm: {
      format: "esm",
      outfile: "./dist/index.esm.js",
    },
    cjs: {
      format: "cjs",
      outfile: "./dist/index.cjs.js",
    },
    iife: {
      format: "iife",
      outfile: "./dist/index.iife.js",
    },
  },
  serveMode: {
    index: "public/index.html",
    minify: false,
    minifyWhitespace: false,
    injectArtifacts: ["esm"],
    watchPaths: ["./src/**/*.ts"],
    build: ["esm"]
  },
  watchMode: {
    external: ["mir"],
    minify: true,
    minifyWhitespace: true,
    watchPaths: ["./src/**/*.ts"],
    build: ["esm"]
  },
  buildMode: {
    external: ["mir"],
    build: ["esm", "cjs", "iife"],
    banner: {
      js: `// ${pkg.name} ${pkg.version}`,
    },
  },
};

// pragma-shim.js
import { h, Fragment } from "mir";
export { h, Fragment };

An example node project:

export default {
  artifactsCommon: {
    platform: "node",
    bundle: true,
  },
  artifacts: {
    esm: {
      format: "esm",
      entryPoints: ["./src/index.ts"],
      outfile: "./dist/index.esm.js",
    },
  },
  runMode: {
    build: ["esm"],
    watchPaths: ["./src/**/*.ts"],
    runfile: "./test.js",
  },
  buildMode: {
    minify: true,
    minifyWhitespace: true,
  }
}

In the above config, runMode defines a runfile that will be called with node <runfile> after the "esm" artifact is built.

`beforeAll` and `afterAll`

beforeAll is handy if you need to do something before all artifacts are generated by esbuild, like processing styles with PostCSS as in the example below.

async function style() {
  const from = "src/style/style.css";
  const to = "public/css/style.css";
  const css = readFileSync(from);
  const result = await postcss([tailwindcss, autoprefixer]).process(css, { from, to });
  writeFileSync(to, result.css);
}

export default {
  serveMode: {
    index: "public/index.html",
    build: ["esm"],
    watchPaths: ["./src/**/*.ts"],
    beforeAll: async () => await style(),
  },
  artifacts: {
    esm: {
      bundle: true,
      entryPoints: ["./src/index.tsx"],
      outfile: "./dist/index.esm.js",
    }
  },
}

Serving

The index.html pointed to by serveMode.index doesn't need to explicitly include a path to any outfile, that's the point of the serveMode.injectArtifacts option. The outfile of the referenced artifact is automatically injected during esbuild-wrapper serve.

In other words, if serveMode.injectArtifacts is ["esm"], artifacts.esm.outfile gets injected onto the page.