Why does %PUBLIC_URL% not get replaced in Webpack bundled index.html?

Question

I am trying to deploy the front-end of my web application, but when I deploy to my hosting platform (currently AWS Amplify/S3) - no content displays on the website

I created the application using create-react-app, so the project structure follows their standard (public, src folders etc.).

When I run the application locally it works fine.

From the console errors, and looking at the index.html page that is generated by webpack, it looks like it is not replacing the %PUBLIC_URL% field that should be replaced with the public directory on build.

Please can someone explain how to fix this issue?

I have included my webpack.config file below and the full repo can be found here

const path = require('path')
const HtmlWebpackPlugin = require('html-webpack-plugin')

const config = {
  entry: ['react-hot-loader/patch', './src/index.js'],
  output: {
    path: path.resolve(__dirname, 'build'),
    filename: 'bundle.js',
  },
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.(js|jsx)$/,
        use: 'babel-loader',
        exclude: /node_modules/,
      },
      {
        test: /\.css$/,
        use: ['style-loader', 'css-loader'],
      },
      {
        test: /\.svg$/,
        use: 'file-loader',
      },
      {
        test: /\.png$/,
        use: [
          {
            loader: 'url-loader',
            options: {
              mimetype: 'image/png',
            },
          },
        ],
      },
      {
        test: /\.(ttf|eot|woff|woff2)$/,
        use: 'file-loader',
      },
    ],
  },
  resolve: {
    extensions: ['.js', '.jsx'],
    alias: {
      'react-dom': '@hot-loader/react-dom',
    },
  },
  devServer: {
    contentBase: './build',
  },
  plugins: [
    new HtmlWebpackPlugin({
      template: path.resolve('./public/index.html'),
    }),
  ],
}

module.exports = config

Answer 1

Turns out this was an issue with me trying to add a custom Webpack configuration to a create-react-app project.

I've removed the Webpack config now, and instead used the dist files created when using the create-react-app build process.