Webpack backend and frontend hot reloading

Question

I am trying to use Webpack to live reload both my client side and server side code. The config I have at the moment will rebuild the files automatically when i run the webpack-dev-server command. But nothing updates in the browser, even when I manually refresh it, same content on the screen

var webpack = require('webpack');
var path = require('path');
var fs = require('fs');

var nodeModules = {};
fs.readdirSync('node_modules')
    .filter(function(x) {
        return ['.bin'].indexOf(x) === -1;
    })
    .forEach(function(mod) {
        nodeModules[mod] = 'commonjs ' + mod;
    });

module.exports = {
    entry: [ './server/server.js', './client/app.js'],
    target: 'node',
    output: {
        path: path.join(__dirname, 'build'),
        filename: '[name].js'
    },
    module: {
        loaders: [{
            exclude: /node_modules/,
            loader: 'babel'
        }]
    },
    resolve: {
        extensions: ['', '.js', '.jsx']
    },
    externals: nodeModules,
    devServer: {
        historyApiFallback: true,
        contentBase: './'
    }
};

Answer 1

There is a runtime API embedded in your environment for HMR that you have to interact with. At a minimum, you need to add the following somewhere in your entrypoint script:

if (module.hot) {
    module.hot.accept()
}

Have a look at the code sample provided in the new documentation to get a better idea.