📚 API

Bundler

Instead of the CLI you can also use the API to initialise a bundler, for more advanced use-cases (e.g. custom processing after every build). A watch example with every option explained:

const Bundler = require('parcel-bundler');
const Path = require('path');

// Single entrypoint file location:
const entryFiles = Path.join(__dirname, './index.html');
// OR: Multiple files with globbing (can also be .js)
// const entryFiles = './src/*.js';
// OR: Multiple files in an array
// const entryFiles = ['./src/index.html', './some/other/directory/scripts.js'];

// Bundler options
const options = {
  outDir: './dist', // The out directory to put the build files in, defaults to dist
  outFile: 'index.html', // The name of the outputFile
  publicUrl: '/', // The url to serve on, defaults to '/'
  watch: true, // Whether to watch the files and rebuild them on change, defaults to process.env.NODE_ENV !== 'production'
  cache: true, // Enabled or disables caching, defaults to true
  cacheDir: '.cache', // The directory cache gets put in, defaults to .cache
  contentHash: false, // Disable content hash from being included on the filename
  global: 'moduleName', // Expose modules as UMD under this name, disabled by default
  minify: false, // Minify files, enabled if process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production'
  scopeHoist: false, // Turn on experimental scope hoisting/tree shaking flag, for smaller production bundles
  target: 'browser', // Browser/node/electron, defaults to browser
  bundleNodeModules: false, // By default, package.json dependencies are not included when using 'node' or 'electron' with 'target' option above. Set to true to adds them to the bundle, false by default
  https: { // Define a custom {key, cert} pair, use true to generate one or false to use http
    cert: './ssl/c.crt', // Path to custom certificate
    key: './ssl/k.key' // Path to custom key
  },
  logLevel: 3, // 5 = save everything to a file, 4 = like 3, but with timestamps and additionally log http requests to dev server, 3 = log info, warnings & errors, 2 = log warnings & errors, 1 = log errors, 0 = log nothing
  hmr: true, // Enable or disable HMR while watching
  hmrPort: 0, // The port the HMR socket runs on, defaults to a random free port (0 in node.js resolves to a random free port)
  sourceMaps: true, // Enable or disable sourcemaps, defaults to enabled (minified builds currently always create sourcemaps)
  hmrHostname: '', // A hostname for hot module reload, default to ''
  detailedReport: false, // Prints a detailed report of the bundles, assets, filesizes and times, defaults to false, reports are only printed if watch is disabled
  autoInstall: true, // Enable or disable auto install of missing dependencies found during bundling
};

(async function() {
  // Initializes a bundler using the entrypoint location and options provided
  const bundler = new Bundler(entryFiles, options);

  // Run the bundler, this returns the main bundle
  // Use the events if you're using watch mode as this promise will only trigger once and not for every rebuild
  const bundle = await bundler.bundle();
})();

If you want to use/start the built-in development server of Parcel you can use bundler.serve(). This calls bundler.bundle() and starts a simple http (or https) server. serve() takes in 3 arguments (they are all optional), first one is port, second one is https (this can either be an object {cert,key} pointing to the location of key and cert file or true to generate a key) and the third one is the host.

Events

This is a list of all bundler events

• bundled gets called once Parcel has successfully finished bundling, the main bundle instance gets passed to the callback

const bundler = new Bundler(...);
bundler.on('bundled', (bundle) => {
  // bundler contains all assets and bundles, see documentation for details
});
// Call this to start bundling
bundler.bundle();

• buildEnd gets called after each build (aka including every rebuild), this also emits if an error occurred

const bundler = new Bundler(...);
bundler.on('buildEnd', () => {
  // Do something...
});
// Call this to start bundling
bundler.bundle();

• buildStart gets called at the start of the first build, the entryFiles Array gets passed to the callback

const bundler = new Bundler(...);
bundler.on('buildStart', entryPoints => {
  // Do something...
});
// Call this to start bundling
bundler.bundle();

• buildError gets called every time an error occurs during builds, the Error Object gets passed to the callback

const bundler = new Bundler(...);
bundler.on('buildError', error => {
  // Do something...
});
// Call this to start bundling
bundler.bundle();

Bundle

A Bundle is what Parcel uses to bundle assets together, this also contains child and sibling bundles to be able to build a bundle tree.

Properties

• type: The type of assets it contains (e.g. js, css, map, ...)
• name: The name of the bundle (generated using Asset.generateBundleName() of entryAsset)
• parentBundle: The parent bundle, is null in case of the entry bundle
• entryAsset: The entryPoint of the bundle, used for generating the name and gathering assets.
• assets: A Set of all assets inside the bundle
• childBundles: A Set of all child bundles
• siblingBundles: A Set of all sibling bundles
• siblingBundlesMap: A Map<String(Type: js, css, map, ...), Bundle> of all sibling bundles
• offsets: A Map<Asset, number(line number inside the bundle)> of all the locations of the assets inside the bundle, used to generate accurate source maps

Tree

The Bundle contains a parentBundle, childBundles and siblingBundles, all these properties together create a fast to iterate bundle tree.

A very basic example of an asset tree and it's generated bundle Tree

Asset tree:

index.html requires index.js and index.css.

index.js requires test.js and test.txt

index.html
├── index.js
│   ├── test.js
│   └── test.txt
└── index.css

Bundle Tree:

index.html gets used as an entry asset for the main bundle, this main bundle creates two child bundles one for index.js and one for index.css this because they both are different from the html type.

index.js requires two files, test.js and test.txt.

test.js gets added to the assets of the index.js bundle, as it is of the same type as index.js

test.txt creates a new bundle and gets added as a child of the index.js bundle as it is a different assetType than index.js

index.css has no requires and therefore only contains it's entry Asset.

index.css and index.js bundles are siblingBundles of each other as they share the same parent.

index.html
├── index.js ········ (includes index.js and test.js)
│   └── test.txt ···· (includes test.txt)
└── index.css ······· (includes index.css)

Middleware

Middleware can be used to hook into an http server (e.g. express or node http).

An example of using the Parcel middleware with express

const Bundler = require('parcel-bundler');
const app = require('express')();

const file = 'index.html'; // Pass an absolute path to the entrypoint here
const options = {}; // See options section of api docs, for the possibilities

// Initialize a new bundler using a file and options
const bundler = new Bundler(file, options);

// Let express use the bundler middleware, this will let Parcel handle every request over your express server
app.use(bundler.middleware());

// Listen on port 8080
app.listen(8080);

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