esbuild-node-externals

Esbuild plugin to easily exclude node modules during builds.

When bundling with Esbuild for the backend by default it will try to bundle all the dependencies. However it's a good idea to not bundle all the node_modules dependencies. This plugin will scan the dependencies included in your project and will exclude them from the final bundle.

Installation

This plugin requires minimum Node.js 12, and Esbuild 0.12+.

# with npm
npm install --save-dev esbuild-node-externals

# with yarn
yarn add --dev esbuild-node-externals

Usage

When you call the esbuild build API, add the esbuild-node-externals plugin.

// Your bundler file
const esbuild = require('esbuild');
const { nodeExternalsPlugin } = require('esbuild-node-externals');

esbuild.build({
  entryPoints: ['src/index.js'],
  bundle: true,
  platform: 'node',
  outfile: 'dist/index.js',
  plugins: [nodeExternalsPlugin()],
});

Options

When calling this package, you can pass an options object.

// Your bundler file
const esbuild = require('esbuild');
const { nodeExternalsPlugin } = require('esbuild-node-externals');

esbuild.build({
  // ...
  plugins: [
    nodeExternalsPlugin({
      packagePath: 'path/to/package.json',
    }),
  ],
});

options.packagePath

Path to your package.json. Can be a string or an array of strings. If you are using a monorepo you can provide a list of all the package.json to check.

If this option is not specified the default behavior is to start with the current directory's package.json then go up scan for all package.json files in parent directories recursively until either the root git directory is reached or until no other package.json can be found.

options.dependencies (default to true)

Make package.json dependencies external.

options.devDependencies (default to true)

Make package.json devDependencies external.

options.peerDependencies (default to true)

Make package.json peerDependencies external.

options.optionalDependencies (default to true)

Make package.json optionalDependencies external.

options.allowList (default to [])

An array for the externals to allow, so they will be included in the bundle. Can accept exact strings ('module_name'), regex patterns (/^module_name/), or a function that accepts the module name and returns whether it should be included.

options.allowWorkspaces (default to false)

Automatically exclude all packages defined as workspaces (workspace:*) in a monorepo.

options.cwd (default to buildOptions.absWorkingDir || process.cwd())

Sets the current working directory for the plugin.

Inspiration

This package and the implementation are inspired by the work of @liady on webpack-node-externals for webpack and @Septh on rollup-plugin-node-externals for rollup.

License

MIT © Léo Pradel