a-webpack-plugin

Isomorphic (universal) css supershort classNames generator for webpack.

What is this for?

If you are crazy need for mobile speed super optimizator, you may want to shortinize your classNames in a hardcore ultimate way:

<div class="mz nb">
  <label class="ea">
    <span class="ej em el eo">Some text</span>
    <input name="phoneNumber" label="Phone" class="ed eg ef">
  </label>
  <div class="nh ni">
    <span class="mr">Some other text</span>
  </div>
</div>

a-webpack-plugin is not stable for now, use it at your own risk)

But it works)

Why I need this plugin?

What the problem? Why cant I just use APlugin.getClassName for getLocalIdent?

Well, the problem is that webpack doesn't guarantee you an order in which css files are processed through loaders. Because of that:

1. Client-side and server-side build may differ
2. Each build may differ from each other (non-deterministic build)

a-webpack-plugin solves this order problem.

How to use

First, you should use css-loader

Install a-webpack-plugin plugin

npm i a-webpack-plugin --save-dev

Then add three lines of code to your webpack config(s)

const APlugin = require('a-webpack-plugin') // 1
 
...
 
const config = {
  rules: {
  	test: /\.(css)$/,
    use: [
      { loader: 'style-loader' },
      {
        loader: 'css-loader',
        options: {
          modules: true,
          getLocalIdent: APlugin.getClassName, // 2 ← define `ab` classnames generator
        },
      },
      'postcss-loader',
    ],
  }
  ...
  plugins: [
    new APlugin(), // 3
    ...
  ],
  ...
}

Same if you use ExtractTextPlugin

const APlugin = require('a-webpack-plugin') // 1
 
...
 
const config = {
  rules: {
  	test: /\.(css)$/,
    use: ExtractTextPlugin.extract({
      use: [
        {
          loader: 'css-loader',
          options: {
            modules: true,
            getLocalIdent: APlugin.getClassName, // 2
          },
        },
        'postcss-loader',
      ],
    }),
  }
  ...
  plugins: [
    new APlugin(), // 3 ← Before ExtractTextPlugin!
    new ExtractTextPlugin(),
    ...
  ],
  ...
}

If you have server-side rendering, dont forget to do the same thing for your server-side bundle.

If you use css-require-hook instead of webpack-bundling for server-side, you cannot use a-webpack-plugin for now (but you will be able to do that in near future!).

Custom alphabet

Default alphabet is

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ_-0123456789

ClassName cannot start with - or _ or digit.

You can customize alphabet:

new APlugin({ alphabet: 'abc' })

Read more about incstr package.

Dev mode

In development, it is important to reload the server (if you have one) each time you change your html/css, because any new css className may change all other classNames.

Other option is to use mode=development for development, and mode=production for production:

new APlugin({ mode: 'development' })

Default value of mode option is process.env.NODE_ENV || 'production'.

Also, production mode may slow down your re-build process, if your project is super big.