Setting up webpack for angular2 to create bundles to files, instead of storing them in memory

Question

I am using Angular2 with Webpack that is set up according to Angular2 webpack introduction.

When running the webpacks dev server it bundles my typescript files and loads them in the browser from memory.

Thing is, that I need to load the app from IIS, because it needs to have windows authentication, so I figured the only way develop would be to reconfigure webpack to create the bundled files on change instead of running a build command after each change.

How would I go about doing that?

My config files are identical to the ones from the tutorial here.

Also if I could still have livereload somehow, that would be great.

I will post the webpack.config files anyway.

webpack.config.js

 module.exports = require('./config/webpack.dev.js');

webpack.common.js

var webpack = require('webpack');
var HtmlWebpackPlugin = require('html-webpack-plugin');
var ExtractTextPlugin = require('extract-text-webpack-plugin');
var helpers = require('./helpers');

module.exports = {
  entry: {
    'polyfills': './src/polyfills.ts',
    'vendor': './src/vendor.ts',
    'app': './src/main.ts'
  },

  resolve: {
    extensions: ['', '.js', '.ts']
  },

  module: {
    loaders: [
      {
        test: /\.ts$/,
        loaders: ['ts', 'angular2-template-loader']
      },
      {
        test: /\.html$/,
        loader: 'html'
      },
      {
        test: /\.(png|jpe?g|gif|svg|woff|woff2|ttf|eot|ico)$/,
        loader: 'file?name=assets/[name].[hash].[ext]'
      },
      {
        test: /\.css$/,
        exclude: helpers.root('src', 'app'),
        loader: ExtractTextPlugin.extract('style', 'css?sourceMap')
      },
      {
        test: /\.css$/,
        include: helpers.root('src', 'app'),
        loader: 'raw'
      }
    ]
  },

  plugins: [
    new webpack.optimize.CommonsChunkPlugin({
      name: ['app', 'vendor', 'polyfills']
    }),

    new HtmlWebpackPlugin({
      template: 'src/index.html'
    })
  ]
};

webpack.dev.js

var webpackMerge = require('webpack-merge');
var ExtractTextPlugin = require('extract-text-webpack-plugin');
var commonConfig = require('./webpack.common.js');
var helpers = require('./helpers');

module.exports = webpackMerge(commonConfig, {
  devtool: 'cheap-module-eval-source-map',

  output: {
    path: helpers.root('dist'),
    publicPath: 'http://localhost:8080/',
    filename: '[name].js',
    chunkFilename: '[id].chunk.js'
  },

  plugins: [
    new ExtractTextPlugin('[name].css')
  ],

  devServer: {
    historyApiFallback: true,
    stats: 'minimal'
  }
});

webpack.prod.js

var webpack = require('webpack');
var webpackMerge = require('webpack-merge');
var ExtractTextPlugin = require('extract-text-webpack-plugin');
var commonConfig = require('./webpack.common.js');
var helpers = require('./helpers');

const ENV = process.env.NODE_ENV = process.env.ENV = 'production';

module.exports = webpackMerge(commonConfig, {
  devtool: 'source-map',

  output: {
    path: helpers.root('dist'),
    publicPath: '/',
    filename: '[name].[hash].js',
    chunkFilename: '[id].[hash].chunk.js'
  },

  htmlLoader: {
    minimize: false // workaround for ng2
  },

  plugins: [
    new webpack.NoErrorsPlugin(),
    new webpack.optimize.DedupePlugin(),
    new webpack.optimize.UglifyJsPlugin({ // https://github.com/angular/angular/issues/10618
      mangle: {
        keep_fnames: true
      }
    }),
    new ExtractTextPlugin('[name].[hash].css'),
    new webpack.DefinePlugin({
      'process.env': {
        'ENV': JSON.stringify(ENV)
      }
    })
  ]
});

package.json

{
  "name": "proj",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "scripts": {
    "start": "webpack-dev-server --inline --progress --port 8080",
    "build": "rimraf dist && webpack --config config/webpack.prod.js --progress --profile --bail",
    "postinstall": "typings install"
  },
  "keywords": [],
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC",
  "dependencies": {
    "@angular/common": "2.0.0",
    "@angular/compiler": "2.0.0",
    "@angular/core": "2.0.0",
    "@angular/forms": "2.0.0",
    "@angular/http": "2.0.0",
    "@angular/platform-browser": "2.0.0",
    "@angular/platform-browser-dynamic": "2.0.0",
    "@angular/router": "3.0.0",
    "core-js": "^2.4.1",
    "rxjs": "5.0.0-beta.12",
    "zone.js": "^0.6.23",
    "bootstrap": "^3.3.6",
    "ng2-pagination": "^0.3.5"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "angular2-template-loader": "^0.4.0",
    "css-loader": "^0.23.1",
    "extract-text-webpack-plugin": "^1.0.1",
    "file-loader": "^0.8.5",
    "html-loader": "^0.4.3",
    "html-webpack-plugin": "^2.15.0",
    "null-loader": "^0.1.1",
    "phantomjs-prebuilt": "^2.1.7",
    "raw-loader": "^0.5.1",
    "rimraf": "^2.5.2",
    "style-loader": "^0.13.1",
    "ts-loader": "^0.8.1",
    "typescript": "^2.0.2",
    "typings": "^1.3.2",
    "webpack": "^1.13.0",
    "webpack-dev-server": "^1.14.1",
    "webpack-merge": "^0.14.0"
  }
}

Answer 1

So I found out it's actually pretty simple. Instead of running the server with npm start just run webpack or webpack --watch, and add my desired output dir in the webpack.dev.js output section.

Can even remove the hashed name by removing [hash] field from naming templates everywhere, so don't need to update index.html at all.