Multiple html files using webpack

I'm trying to do something in a project that I'm not sure if it is possible, I am in a wrong way or misunderstanding something. We are using webpack, and the idea is to serve more than one html file.

localhost:8181 -> serves index.html
localhost:8181/example.html -> serves example.html

I'm trying to do it by setting multiple entry points, following the documentation:

The folder structure is:

/
|- package.json
|- webpack.config.js
  /src
   |- index.html
   |- example.html
   | /js
      |- main.js
      |- example.js

Webpack.config.js:

...
entry: {
    main: './js/main.js',
    exampleEntry: './js/example.js'
},
output: {
    path: path.resolve(__dirname, 'build', 'target'),
    publicPath: '/',
    filename: '[name].bundle.js',
    chunkFilename: '[id].bundle_[chunkhash].js',
    sourceMapFilename: '[file].map'
},
...

index.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html
<head>
    ...
    <link type="text/css" href="/style/default.css">
</head>
<body>
    <div id="container"></div>
    <script src="/main.bundle.js"></script>
</body>
</html>

example.html:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html
<head>
    ...
    <link type="text/css" href="/style/default.css">
</head>
<body>
    ...
    <script src="/example.bundle.js"></script>
</body>
</html>

Somebody knows what I'm doing wrong?

Thank you.

Solution

See an entrypoint as the root of a tree that references many other assets like javascript modules, images, templates and so on. When you define more than one entrypoint, you basically split your assets into so called chunks to not have all your code and assets in one single bundle.

What I think you want to achieve is to have more than one "index.html" for different apps that also refer to different chunks of your assets which you already defined with your entrypoints.

Copying an index.html file or even generating one with references to these entrypoints is not handled by the entrypoint mechanism - it is the other way round. A basic approach for handling html pages is using the html-webpack-plugin which not only can copy html files but also has an extensive mechanism for templating. This is especially helpful if you want to have your bundles suffixed with a bundle hash that is pretty to avoid browser caching issues when you update your app.

As you have defined a name pattern as [id].bundle_[chunkhash].js you can no longer reference your javascript bundle as main.bundle.js as it will be called something like main.bundle_73efb6da.js.

Have a look at the html-webpack-plugin. Especially relevant for your use case:

You should probably have something like that in the end (warning: not tested)

plugins: [
  new HtmlWebpackPlugin({
    filename: 'index.html',
    template: 'src/index.html',
    chunks: ['main']
  }),
  new HtmlWebpackPlugin({
    filename: 'example.html',
    template: 'src/example.html',
    chunks: ['exampleEntry']
  })
]

Please be aware to reference the name of the entrypoint in the chunks array, so in your example this should be exampleEntry. Probably it's also a good idea to move your templates into a specific folder instead of having them in directly inside the root src folder.