This README is for babel-loader v8 + Babel v7 Check the 7.x branch for docs with Babel v6
This package allows transpiling JavaScript files using Babel and webpack.
Note: Issues with the output should be reported on the Babel Issues tracker.
webpack 4.x | babel-loader 8.x | babel 7.x
npm install -D babel-loader @babel/core @babel/preset-env webpack
webpack 4.x | babel-loader 7.x | babel 6.x
npm install -D babel-loader@7 babel-core babel-preset-env webpack
webpack documentation: Loaders
Within your webpack configuration object, you'll need to add the babel-loader to the list of modules, like so:
module: {
rules: [
{
test: /\.m?js$/,
exclude: /(node_modules|bower_components)/,
use: {
loader: 'babel-loader',
options: {
presets: ['@babel/preset-env']
}
}
}
]
}
See the babel
options.
You can pass options to the loader by using the options
property:
module: {
rules: [
{
test: /\.m?js$/,
exclude: /(node_modules|bower_components)/,
use: {
loader: 'babel-loader',
options: {
presets: ['@babel/preset-env'],
plugins: ['@babel/plugin-proposal-object-rest-spread']
}
}
}
]
}
This loader also supports the following loader-specific option:
cacheDirectory
: Default false
. When set, the given directory will be used to cache the results of the loader. Future webpack builds will attempt to read from the cache to avoid needing to run the potentially expensive Babel recompilation process on each run. If the value is blank (loader: 'babel-loader?cacheDirectory'
) or true
(loader: 'babel-loader?cacheDirectory=true'
), the loader will use the default cache directory in node_modules/.cache/babel-loader
or fallback to the default OS temporary file directory if no node_modules
folder could be found in any root directory.
cacheIdentifier
: Default is a string composed by the babel-core
's version, the babel-loader
's version, the contents of .babelrc
file if it exists, and the value of the environment variable BABEL_ENV
with a fallback to the NODE_ENV
environment variable. This can be set to a custom value to force cache busting if the identifier changes.
cacheCompression
: Default true
. When set, each Babel transform output will be compressed with Gzip. If you want to opt-out of cache compression, set it to false
-- your project may benefit from this if it transpiles thousands of files.
customize
: Default null
. The path of a module that exports a custom
callback like the one that you'd pass to .custom()
. Since you already have to make a new file to use this, it is recommended that you instead use .custom
to create a wrapper loader. Only use this is you must continue using babel-loader
directly, but still want to customize.
Make sure you are transforming as few files as possible. Because you are probably matching /\.m?js$/
, you might be transforming the node_modules
folder or other unwanted source.
To exclude node_modules
, see the exclude
option in the loaders
config as documented above.
You can also speed up babel-loader by as much as 2x by using the cacheDirectory
option. This will cache transformations to the filesystem.
Babel uses very small helpers for common functions such as _extend
. By default, this will be added to every file that requires it.
You can instead require the Babel runtime as a separate module to avoid the duplication.
The following configuration disables automatic per-file runtime injection in Babel, requiring babel-plugin-transform-runtime
instead and making all helper references use it.
See the docs for more information.
NOTE: You must run npm install -D @babel/plugin-transform-runtime
to include this in your project and babel-runtime
itself as a dependency with npm install @babel/runtime
.
rules: [
// the 'transform-runtime' plugin tells Babel to
// require the runtime instead of inlining it.
{
test: /\.m?js$/,
exclude: /(node_modules|bower_components)/,
use: {
loader: 'babel-loader',
options: {
presets: ['@babel/preset-env'],
plugins: ['@babel/plugin-transform-runtime']
}
}
}
]
Since babel-plugin-transform-runtime includes a polyfill that includes a custom regenerator-runtime and core-js, the following usual shimming method using webpack.ProvidePlugin
will not work:
// ...
new webpack.ProvidePlugin({
'Promise': 'bluebird'
}),
// ...
The following approach will not work either:
require('@babel/runtime/core-js/promise').default = require('bluebird');
var promise = new Promise;
which outputs to (using runtime
):
'use strict';
var _Promise = require('@babel/runtime/core-js/promise')['default'];
require('@babel/runtime/core-js/promise')['default'] = require('bluebird');
var promise = new _Promise();
The previous Promise
library is referenced and used before it is overridden.
One approach is to have a "bootstrap" step in your application that would first override the default globals before your application:
// bootstrap.js
require('@babel/runtime/core-js/promise').default = require('bluebird');
// ...
require('./app');
babel
has been moved to babel-core
.If you receive this message, it means that you have the npm package babel
installed and are using the short notation of the loader in the webpack config (which is not valid anymore as of webpack 2.x):
{
test: /\.m?js$/,
loader: 'babel',
}
webpack then tries to load the babel
package instead of the babel-loader
.
To fix this, you should uninstall the npm package babel
, as it is deprecated in Babel v6. (Instead, install babel-cli
or babel-core
.)
In the case one of your dependencies is installing babel
and you cannot uninstall it yourself, use the complete name of the loader in the webpack config:
{
test: /\.m?js$/,
loader: 'babel-loader',
}
babel-loader
exposes a loader-builder utility that allows users to add custom handling
of Babel's configuration for each file that it processes.
.custom
accepts a callback that will be called with the loader's instance of
babel
so that tooling can ensure that it using exactly the same @babel/core
instance as the loader itself.
In cases where you want to customize without actually having a file to call .custom
, you
may also pass the customize
option with a string pointing at a file that exports
your custom
callback function.
// Export from "./my-custom-loader.js" or whatever you want.
module.exports = require("babel-loader").custom(babel => {
function myPlugin() {
return {
visitor: {},
};
}
return {
// Passed the loader options.
customOptions({ opt1, opt2, ...loader }) {
return {
// Pull out any custom options that the loader might have.
custom: { opt1, opt2 },
// Pass the options back with the two custom options removed.
loader,
};
},
// Passed Babel's 'PartialConfig' object.
config(cfg) {
if (cfg.hasFilesystemConfig()) {
// Use the normal config
return cfg.options;
}
return {
...cfg.options,
plugins: [
...(cfg.options.plugins || []),
// Include a custom plugin in the options.
myPlugin,
],
};
},
result(result) {
return {
...result,
code: result.code + "\n// Generated by some custom loader",
};
},
};
});
// And in your Webpack config
module.exports = {
// ..
module: {
rules: [{
// ...
loader: path.join(__dirname, 'my-custom-loader.js'),
// ...
}]
}
};
customOptions(options: Object): { custom: Object, loader: Object }
Given the loader's options, split custom options out of babel-loader
's
options.
config(cfg: PartialConfig): Object
Given Babel's PartialConfig
object, return the options
object that should
be passed to babel.transform
.
result(result: Result): Result
Given Babel's result object, allow loaders to make additional tweaks to it.
Add the following code to your website.
For more information on customizing the embed code, read Embedding Snippets.