Exporting a class with Webpack and Babel not working

Question

I have a very simple setup with Webpack and Babel for a small library.

Before, I had the following architecture to generate a ES5 version of the library:

module.exports.lib = (function () {
    /* private part of library here */

    return {
        ... /* public part of library here */
    }
})();

Everything is working fine this way, and I even had some ES6 features such as arrow functions inside my library and everything worked. However, I decided to change my approach to a ES6 class, this way:

export default class Library {

}

And now, when I try to do:

var library = new Library();

I get that Library was not defined. Even just evaluating Library returns undefined.

So what I did was turn the file that uses the library into an ES6 file that does import Library from 'libraryfile.js' and it worked again.

However, I'd really like my output library to still be usable from regular ES5 with a <script> tag just like before. Is this possible?

Here's my webpack config file:

module.exports = {
  entry: {
    pentagine: "./lib/pentagine.js",
    demos: ["./demos/helicopter_game/PlayState.js"]
  },

  output: {
    path: __dirname,
    filename: "./build/[name].js",
    libraryTarget: 'umd'
  },

  module: {
    loaders: [
      {
        test: /.js$/,
        loader: 'babel-loader',
        exclude: /node_modules/,
        query: {
          presets: ['es2015']
        }
      }
    ]
  }
};

Answer 1

Default exports are stored in the default property of the module. If you want to make your library accessible without users having to know that, you can change your webpack entry file to

module.exports = require('./libraryfile').default;

Also, make sure you have library: 'YourLibraryName' in your webpack config as per webpack.github.io/docs/configuration.html#output-library.

Answer 2

Webpack has changed a lot, now you can get the same results as the Felix Kling answer but with webpack config. You should add the libraryExport key in the output config and set it to "default" . That would set your main class as the root content of your library. Here are the docs .

Your webpack config should be like this:

module.exports = {
  entry: {
    pentagine: "./lib/pentagine.js",
    demos: ["./demos/helicopter_game/PlayState.js"]
  },

  output: {
    path: __dirname,
    filename: "./build/[name].js",
    libraryTarget: 'umd',
    libraryExport: 'default' //<-- New line
  },

  module: {
    loaders: [
      {
        test: /.js$/,
        loader: 'babel-loader',
        exclude: /node_modules/,
        query: {
          presets: ['es2015']
        }
      }
    ]
  }
};

Answer 3

As Matias points out, webpack must be configured to export the default in order to avoid your client code doing const MyLibrary = require('MyLibrary').default

In 2021, using webpack 5, the correct config to is:

module.exports = {
    
    output: {
        filename: '[name].bundle.js',
        library: {
            name: 'MyLibrary',
            type: 'umd',
            export: 'default' //<--- important
        },
    },

    // specify entry and other configs per usual..
}

ref: https://webpack.js.org/configuration/output/#outputlibraryexport