Babel 6 react configuration with webpack

Migration to Babel 6 was … not so easy and I just share few configuration details you may use in order to use last ES6 features.

Presets and Plugins

Babel is now bundled with presets and plugins.

Each preset includes a set of plugins you may want to use.

Each plugin is dedicated to an ES6 feature (arrow function, class….) and defines a transformation process to be applied.

You include either a set of plugins , or select them one by one.

Npm installation

Babel document is intuitive about that and for instance if you want to install es2015 preset, or a specific arrow-functions plugin:

// preset example
npm install babel-preset-es2015
// plugin example
npm install babel-plugin-transform-es2015-arrow-functions

A complete dependency and package.json may look like

{
  "devDependencies": {
    "babel-core": "^6.3.26",
    "babel-eslint": "^5.0.0-beta6",
    "babel-loader": "^6.2.0",
    "babel-plugin-transform-class-properties": "^6.4.0",
    "babel-plugin-transform-decorators-legacy": "^1.3.4",
    "babel-plugin-transform-es2015-arrow-functions": "^6.3.13",
    "babel-plugin-transform-es2015-classes": "^6.3.15",
    "babel-plugin-transform-es2015-destructuring": "^6.3.15",
    "babel-plugin-transform-es2015-modules-commonjs": "^6.3.16",
    "babel-plugin-transform-es2015-object-super": "^6.3.13",
    "babel-preset-es2015": "^6.3.13",
    "babel-preset-react": "^6.3.13",
    "babel-preset-stage-0": "^6.3.13",
    "babel-runtime": "^6.3.19"
}

Not usage of babel-loader for Webpack and babel-eslint for nice linting.

It is also convenient to create a .babelrc file at root of you project:

{
  "presets": ["react", "es2015", "stage-0"],
  "plugins": [
    "transform-es2015-arrow-functions",
    "transform-es2015-classes",
    "transform-es2015-destructuring",
    "transform-es2015-modules-commonjs",
    "transform-es2015-object-super",
    "transform-class-properties",
    "transform-decorators-legacy"
  ]
}

Webpack usage

I have choosen to pass loader options as query string and here is my configuration.

But you can also find documentation about babel-loader here or with more details

Extract of my webpack configuration

module: {
    loaders: [{
      test: /\.js?$/, 
      loaders: ['react-hot', 'babel?presets[]=react,presets[]=es2015,plugins[]=transform-decorators-legacy,plugins[]=transform-class-properties'], 
      exclude: /(node_modules|__tests__)/ 
  }
}

I faced problems with decorators current implementation and as you can see in the meantime I use this transformer implementation babel-plugin-transform-decorators-legacy

Conclusion

Babel 6 is really modular and looks fine :)

Just for fun


Tags: Javascript Babel React ES6

Written on hey January 8, 2016