Meteor Imports Webpack Plugin

This plugin lets you import any Meteor package like if it was a real NPM package. It is useful when you want to use some of the Meteor tools (or even a Meteor server) but you prefer to use Webpack for the client build instead of the Meteor build system.

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How does it work

This plugin extracts the meteor packages from a real meteor project, which lives in a subfolder. Your top-level project directory must not be a meteor project (that is, it should not contain a .meteor directory).

If you are going to use a Meteor server, then a good name could be server. If not, maybe just meteor. We'll stick to server for this guide.

cd my-project
meteor create server # create a real meteor project in the `server` folder

Then you can add or remove packages like you normally do in Meteor. You should remove each module that you don't need to make your bundle as small as possible.

cd server
meteor remove insecure autopublish blaze-html-templates session jquery es5-shim

Add the Meteor packages you want to use.

meteor add accounts-password aldeed:collection2 alanning:roles

You can add or remove packages at any point, don't worry.

Install the plugin

cd ..
npm install meteor-imports-webpack-plugin --save-dev

Include it in your webpack.config.js file

var MeteorImportsPlugin = require('meteor-imports-webpack-plugin');

module.exports = {
    ...
    plugins: [
      new MeteorImportsPlugin(config)
    ]
};

And finally, include this import line in your client entry point.

require('meteor-imports'); // or import 'meteor-imports';

Configuration

The config object passed to the plugin must contain at least these properties:

new MeteorImportsPlugin({
  ROOT_URL: 'http://localhost:3000/',
  DDP_DEFAULT_CONNECTION_URL: 'http://localhost:3000/',
  PUBLIC_SETTINGS: {},
  meteorFolder: 'server',
  meteorEnv: { NODE_ENV: 'development' },
  exclude: ['ecmascript']
})

All the config object is passed to __meteor_runtime_config__ variable so if you need to pass anything else, you can.

config.injectMeteorRuntimeConfig

If injectMeteorRuntimeConfig is false, meteor-imports will not set window.__meteor_runtime_config__, and you don't need to include any of the relevant variables like ROOT_URL in the options. Use this option if you would like to inject __meteor_runtime_config__ in your own SSR.

config.legacy

If truthy, use the web.browser.legacy build folder instead of the web.browser folder.

config.meteorFolder

The subfolder where your Meteor project is located. It can be an absolute path as well.

new MeteorImportsPlugin({
  ...
  meteorFolder: 'meteor'
})

config.meteorProgramsFolder

(Overrides config.meteorFolder) the path to the programs folder within your meteor folder or the result of meteor build --directory.

config.DDP_DEFAULT_CONNECTION_URL

If you are using a Meteor server, point DDP_DEFAULT_CONNECTION_URL to your server url. If you are developing in local, start your Meteor server and Webpack-dev-server in different ports.

# Start the webpack-dev-server in one terminal window.
webpack-dev-server # http://localhost:8080
# And the Meteor server in another.
cd server && meteor # http://localhost:3000

config.PUBLIC_SETTINGS

PUBLIC_SETTINGS is the equivalent to the property public of Meteor's settings.json file. You can still use a settings.json for your server or even import it from Webpack:

var meteorSettings = require('./server/settings.json');

...
new MeteorImportsPlugin({
  ...
  PUBLIC_SETTINGS: meteorSettings.public
})

Finally, you can use the settings using Meteor.settings.public just like you are used to.

config.exclude

If you want to exclude some Meteor core packages you can use the optional exclude property.

For example, if you are not going to use DDP you can exclude all its related packages:

new MeteorImportsPlugin({
  ...
  exclude: [
    'ddp-common',
    'ddp-client',
    'ddp'
  ]
})

This is useful only for the core packages. If you don't to use a Meteor package you added, you should remove it using meteor remove some:package.

By default, these core packages are excluded: 'autoupdate', 'global-imports', 'hot-code-push', 'reload', 'ecmascript' beucase they are useless in Webpack.

You can get a list of the currently used packages in your meteor program.json file:

cd server/.meteor/local/build/programs/web.browser/
cat program.json

If you find that any other package is not useful anymore let me know and I will exclude them by default as well.

config.meteorEnv

Meteor 1.3 expects to have this property along with a NODE_ENV set to 'production' or nothing (development).

new MeteorImportsPlugin({
  ...
  meteorEnv: { NODE_ENV: 'production' }
})

How to import packages

Once you have it configured, you can import any Meteor package in your code. We have followed the same Meteor 1.3 convention, so you have to prepend meteor to avoid name collisions with NPM packages.

Each package exports its Meteor globals as named properties. In ES5 it looks like this.

// ES5
var Meteor = require('meteor/meteor').Meteor;
var Mongo = require('meteor/mongo').Mongo;
var Tracker = require('meteor/tracker').Tracker;
var check = require('meteor/check').check;
var Match = require('meteor/check').Match;

But you'd want to use es2015 for improved imports with destructuring.

// ES2015
import { Meteor } from 'meteor/meteor';
import { Mongo } from 'meteor/mongo';
import { Tracker } from 'meteor/tracker';
import { check, Match } from 'meteor/check';

How to add (or remove) a Meteor package

First, go to your Meteor folder and add (or remove) the package.

cd server
meteor add aldeed:collection2

Make sure the Meteor project is running or run it at least once (so it downloads the package and generates the bundle). Wait until it's completely ready (=> App running at: http://localhost:3000/).

meteor

You can stop it afterwards if you are not using a Meteor server.

Start (or restart) your Webpack server

cd ..
webpack-dev-server

That's it, you can now import it in your code.

import { SimpleSchema } from 'meteor/aldeed:collection2';

const BookSchema = new SimpleSchema({
  ...
});

Vendor chunks

If you want to use the commonChunks plugin to create a separate vendor chunk and include meteor in it, use 'meteor-imports':

module.exports = {
  entry: {
    app: './client/entry.js',
    vendor: ['react', 'meteor-imports', ...],
  },
  ...
  plugins: [
    new webpack.optimize.CommonsChunkPlugin('vendor', 'vendor.bundle.js')
  ]
};

The default Meteor bundle (without any external package, jQuery or Blaze) is 70Kb gzipped.

Hot Module Replacement

If you want to work with HMR you need to add this to your entry file:

if (module.hot) module.hot.accept();

I am not a HMR expert so if you have a better idea of how to deal with it, let me know. It will be great to avoid reloading all the Meteor code on each change.

Examples

Webpack is a powerful but complex tool, with a non-friendly API, so reading code from examples is usually a great way to get you started.

• ES5 imports in Wepack with Meteor 1.2 server
• ES2015 imports in Wepack with Meteor 1.3 server
• ES2015 imports in Wepack with React, HMR and Meteor 1.3 server

App Skeletons

• Crater from @jedwards1211: Meteor(/React) app skeleton that runs your userland code with pure Webpack/Babel instead of isobuild.

The bad things

• Dev servers: if you add or remove Meteor packages, you have to restart your dev servers, both Webpack and Meteor.
• Non used Meteor packages: when you do import 'meteor-imports' all the meteor code is included in your bundle. If you are not using a package, is not enough to just not import it, you have to remove it from meteor: meteor remove some:package. This is not new, it's the way Meteor works.
• Blaze: it doesn't work because Blaze requires a spacebars transpiler to convert the html templates into javascript. I am sure a Webpack loader could be created for this, but anyway I recommend you to switch to React (from npm). If you want to try, I suggest you start with the spacebars compiler created (and used) by Sergio García (@murillo128).
• Blaze related packages: for the obvious same reasons, these don't work either.
• Hot Code Push: for development you don't need it because the Webpack's Hot Module Replacement is more convenient, but you won't have it for production either. I am sure it won't be hard to make it work so if you need it go ahead: I will accept the PR :)
• Cordova: Meteor cordova doesn't work but real Cordova does. The commands are pretty similar so don't worry.
• Cordova Hot Code Push: same here, but don't worry, you can use the excellent CodePush project from Microsoft.

Nothing else as far as I know.

The good things

• React Native: I haven't tested it yet, but I don't see any reason you couldn't use this plugin to import Meteor packages in a React Native project. That means, you can work with the real Meteor tools. No more 3rd party ddpclient libraries!
• No need for a separate Meteor fork: I have seen other projects bringing Meteor to NPM but they fork and modify the real Meteor libraries, and therefore, they have to maintain separate codebases.
• Atmosphere compatibility: Same here, forked-projects don't work with any Meteor package out of the box. This plugin does.
• Alternative core packages: Until now, using a non-official core package was really difficult. With this plugin, we can create alternative core packages and substitute the official ones. For example, we could create a new Tracker package but based on Mobx a superior TRP library. The API for this is not writen yet but it should be fairly easy. Open an issue if you are interested.

Collaboration

If you want you can open issues or do PR's. I am not currently using this plugin at this moment, so I won't fix things or add new features. If you want something, do a PR.

License

MIT, do whatever you want.