[javascript] What does "publicPath" in Webpack do?

Webpack docs state that output.publicPath is:

The output.path from the view of the JavaScript.

Could you please elaborate on what this actually means?

I use output.path and output.filename to specify where Webpack should output the result, but I’m not sure what to put in output.publicPath and whether it is required.

module.exports = {
  output: {
    path: path.resolve("./examples/dist"),
    filename: "app.js",
    publicPath: "What should I put here?"   
  } 
}

publicPath is used by webpack for the replacing relative path defined in your css for refering image and font file.

in my case, i have a cdn,and i am going to place all my processed static files (js,imgs,fonts...) into my cdn,suppose the url is http://my.cdn.com/

so if there is a js file which is the orginal refer url in html is './js/my.js' it should became http://my.cdn.com/js/my.js in production environment

in that case,what i need to do is just set publicpath equals http://my.cdn.com/ and webpack will automatic add that prefix

the publicPath is just used for dev purpose, I was confused at first time I saw this config property, but it makes sense now that I've used webpack for a while

suppose you put all your js source file under src folder, and you config your webpack to build the source file to dist folder with output.path.

But you want to serve your static assets under a more meaningful location like webroot/public/assets, this time you can use out.publicPath='/webroot/public/assets', so that in your html, you can reference your js with <script src="/webroot/public/assets/bundle.js"></script>.

when you request webroot/public/assets/bundle.js the webpack-dev-server will find the js under the dist folder

Update:

thanks for Charlie Martin to correct my answer

original: the publicPath is just used for dev purpose, this is not just for dev purpose

No, this option is useful in the dev server, but its intention is for asynchronously loading script bundles in production. Say you have a very large single page application (for example Facebook). Facebook wouldn't want to serve all of its javascript every time you load the homepage, so it serves only whats needed on the homepage. Then, when you go to your profile, it loads some more javascript for that page with ajax. This option tells it where on your server to load that bundle from

The webpack2 documentation explains this in a much cleaner way: https://webpack.js.org/guides/public-path/#use-cases

webpack has a highly useful configuration that let you specify the base path for all the assets on your application. It's called publicPath.

When executed in the browser, webpack needs to know where you'll host the generated bundle. Thus it is able to request additional chunks (when using code splitting) or referenced files loaded via the file-loader or url-loader respectively.

For example: If you configure your http server to host the generated bundle under /assets/ you should write: publicPath: "/assets/"

filename specifies the name of file into which all your bundled code is going to get accumulated after going through build step.

path specifies the output directory where the app.js(filename) is going to get saved in the disk. If there is no output directory, webpack is going to create that directory for you. for example:

module.exports = {
  output: {
    path: path.resolve("./examples/dist"),
    filename: "app.js"
  } 
}

This will create a directory myproject/examples/dist and under that directory it creates app.js, /myproject/examples/dist/app.js. After building, you can browse to myproject/examples/dist/app.js to see the bundled code

publicPath: "What should I put here?"

publicPath specifies the virtual directory in web server from where bundled file, app.js is going to get served up from. Keep in mind, the word server when using publicPath can be either webpack-dev-server or express server or other server that you can use with webpack.

for example

module.exports = {
  output: {
    path: path.resolve("./examples/dist"),
    filename: "app.js",
    publicPath: path.resolve("/public/assets/js")   
  } 
}

this configuration tells webpack to bundle all your js files into examples/dist/app.js and write into that file.

publicPath tells webpack-dev-server or express server to serve this bundled file ie examples/dist/app.js from specified virtual location in server ie /public/assets/js. So in your html file, you have to reference this file as

<script src="public/assets/js/app.js"></script>

So in summary, publicPath is like mapping between virtual directory in your server and output directory specified by output.path configuration, Whenever request for file public/assets/js/app.js comes, /examples/dist/app.js file will be served

You can use publicPath to point to the location where you want webpack-dev-server to serve its "virtual" files. The publicPath option will be the same location of the content-build option for webpack-dev-server. webpack-dev-server creates virtual files that it will use when you start it. These virtual files resemble the actual bundled files webpack creates. Basically you will want the --content-base option to point to the directory your index.html is in. Here is an example setup:

//application directory structure
/app/
/build/
/build/index.html
/webpack.config.js


//webpack.config.js
var path = require("path");
module.exports = {
...
  output: {
    path: path.resolve(__dirname, "build"),
    publicPath: "/assets/",
    filename: "bundle.js"
  }
};  


//index.html
<!DOCTYPE>
<html>
...
<script src="assets/bundle.js"></script>
</html>

//starting a webpack-dev-server from the command line
$ webpack-dev-server --content-base build 

webpack-dev-server has created a virtual assets folder along with a virtual bundle.js file that it refers to. You can test this by going to localhost:8080/assets/bundle.js then check in your application for these files. They are only generated when you run the webpack-dev-server.

output.path

Local disk directory to store all your output files (Absolute path).

Example: path.join(__dirname, "build/")

Webpack will output everything into localdisk/path-to-your-project/build/

output.publicPath

Where you uploaded your bundled files. (absolute path, or relative to main HTML file)

Example: /assets/

Assumed you deployed the app at server root http://server/.

By using /assets/, the app will find webpack assets at: http://server/assets/. Under the hood, every urls that webpack encounters will be re-written to begin with "/assets/".

src="picture.jpg" Re-writes ? src="/assets/picture.jpg"

Accessed by: (http://server/assets/picture.jpg)

---

src="/img/picture.jpg" Re-writes ? src="/assets/img/picture.jpg"

Accessed by: (http://server/assets/img/picture.jpg)